After Whitehead: Rescher on Process Metaphysics 9783110328189, 9783110327939

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Michel Weber (Ed.) After Whitehead Rescher on Process Metaphysics

PROCESS THOUGHT Edited by Nicholas Rescher • Johanna Seibt • Michel Weber Advisory Board Mark Bickard • Jaime Nubiola • Roberto Poli Volume 1

Michel Weber (Ed.)

After Whitehead Rescher on Process Metaphysics

ontos verlag Frankfurt

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Lancaster

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2004 ontos verlag P.O. Box 15 41, D-63133 Heusenstamm www.ontosverlag.com ISBN 3-937202-49-8

2004

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Key to Abbreviations of N. Rescher Relevant Works .........................9 Preface, Paul Gochet (Liège)..............................................................11 Acknowledgements ............................................................................33 List of Contributors ............................................................................35 Introduction. Process Metaphysics in Context, Michel Weber (Louvain-la-Neuve) ............................................................................41 I. History of Process-Philosophy. Problems of Method and Doctrine, Michael Hampe (Zürich) ....................................................77 II. The Taming of Change, Lieven Decock (Tilburg).........................95 III. Process and Particulars, Johanna Seibt (Aarhus)........................113 IV. Rescher on Process and Universals, George W. Shields (Kentucky State)...............................................................................135 V. Rescher’s Philosophy of Nature, Pete A. Y. Gunter (North Texas) ...............................................................................................147 VI. Reflections on Process and Persons, Harald Atmanspacher (Freiburg) & Jack Martin (Simon Fraser).........................................161 VII. Process Logic and Epistemology, Jacques Riche (Leuven) ......173 VIII. Science: Process and History, Hanne Andersen (Copenhagen)197 IX. Process Theology, John B. Cobb, Jr. (Claremont) .....................211 X. Process Philosophy: Via Idearum or Via Negativa?, Anderson Weekes (New York).........................................................................223 XI (Appendix). Process Semantics, Roberto Poli (Trento)...............267 Replies, Nicholas Rescher (Pittsburgh) ............................................289 General Bibliography .......................................................................323 Index Nominum................................................................................325 Analytic Table of Contents...............................................................335

KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS OF N. RESCHER RELEVANT WORKS

Works by Rescher are henceforth cited by the folowing abbreviations. For the complete reference see the General Bibliography. CI Comp CP EI ID Ind NU PM PP PrP PRRR PS RP Scep SPI SR TP TPL

Conceptual Idealism, 1973. Complexity, 1998. Cognitive Pragmatism, 2001. Empirical Inquiry, 1982. Inquiry Dynamics, 2000. Induction., 1980. Nature and Understanding, 2000. Process Metaphysics. 1996. Process Philosophy, 2000. The Primacy of Practice, 1973. Paradoxes. Their Roots, Range, and Resolution, 2002. Philosophical Standardism, 1994. Realistic Pragmatism, 2000. Scepticism. A Critical Reappraisal, 1980. A System of Pragmatic Idealism, 1992-1994. Satisfying Reason, 1995. A Theory of Possibility, 1975. Topics in Philosophical Logic, 1968.

PREFACE Paul Gochet (Liège)

“[…] une entité physique ne peut être envisagée que comme une sorte de concrétisation, de consolidation locale dans un processus organisateur toujours à l’œuvre […].” Jean Ladrière Introduction In each of the volumes of the prestigious Library of Living Philosophers, a distinguished philosopher is confronted to a panel of eminent critics who explain, interpret or challenge his positions. The philosopher to whom the book is devoted can then reply point by point. Michel Weber has applied the same principle to a great book: Nicholas Rescher’s Process Metaphysics. All contributors focused on one single chapter of the book and Nicholas Rescher reacted to his commentators at the end. This approach is based on the principle “depth first”. Each chapter is submitted to a searching examination and the questions raised receive precise and elaborate answers which help the reader to go deeper into the understanding of Process Metaphysics. My approach in this preface rests upon the principle “breadth first”. I shall broaden the frame of reference and set the stage for a wider dialogue which will bring together the contributors of Process Metaphysics in context and philosophers from all over the world who have taken a stance on the issues discussed in the book. This procedure is designed to highlight the bearing of Process philosophy in context on burning philosophical problems of our time and to show how it can further progress in philosophy.

12 1. History of Process-Philosophy Before starting an inquiry about a philosophical doctrine or about a scientific theory, methodological decisions have to be made and justified. Questions about borders are by no means neutral. The great merit of Michael Hampe’s opening chapter lies in the care and seriousness with which he tackles these questions. Michael Hampe draws a useful distinction between three approaches to philosophy: (1) the doxographic approach, (2) a problemoriented approach, (3) a history that operates with a strong conception of reason. Rescher adds a fourth heading, (4) the thematic approach. Hampe also discusses the distinction between discipline and doctrine. The two are different and our attitudes towards them differ accordingly. We “cultivate” a discipline but we “advocate” a doctrine. There is no watertight separation between the two. Are evolutionary epistemology and naturalized epistemology disciplines or doctrines? Clearly they are border line cases. Michael Hampe’s paper provides historical evidence showing that a philosophical doctrine can lead to the demise of a philosophical discipline or to the emergence of a new philosophical discipline. Hegel’s making ethics a subtopic in the philosophy of law in such a way that it almost disappears as an autonomous philosophical discipline is an instance of the first sort of transformation. Peirce’s creating semiotics from a side-issue of epistemology and turning philosophy of language into a new philosophical discipline is an instance of the second. The way we write the history of a philosophical trend reveals hidden philosophical commitments. This does not mean that objectivity is impossible. We can avoid prejudices but we first have to uncover the philosophical presuppositions that underlie our division of the domain. Hampe’s essay clearly identifies the pitfalls ahead of us. Attention to details is crucial. For instance, a newcomer might be tempted to see some resemblance between Schelling and Whitehead. Both defend a processual conception of reality as a whole. Yet this kind of rapprochement is unwelcome. There is a major difference between these two writers: the first accepts intellectual intuition as a legitimate source of knowledge. The second does not. He remains faithful to empiricism even though he acknowledges metaphysical induction as a legitimate source of knowledge. It is common to say that scientific concepts are theory-laden. This is true also of philosophical concepts. If we push this idea too far, however,

13 no illuminating comparison will be possible anymore. We shall be obliged to say: everything is what it is and not another thing. The extreme relativism generated by the claim that theories are incommensurable is unquestionably wrong. Yet terminology and doctrine cannot be sharply separated and there is something deep in Quine’s claim that language and theory make up—to use Føllesdal’s happy locution—a language-theory conglomerate. All the problems we have reviewed above are discussed and illustrated in Hampe’s paper. 2. The Taming of Change In Individuals, Sir Peter Strawson undertakes to make clear some of the most general structural features of our ordinary thinking about the world. He claims to show that the categories of persons and material bodies must be recognized as having a primary place in all our thinking about things or events in space and time. Investigating the categorial distinctions that we commonly make in our everyday thinking, Strawson observed that the identification of processes which things undergo depends on the things which undergo them, and not vice versa [Strawson, 1959, p. 57]. He concluded that things and persons are more fundamental than processes. They are categories that we have and that we need. On the contrary the category of process-things is one that we neither have nor need. In Process Metaphysics, Nicholas Rescher advocates a philosophical position which is diametrically opposed to Strawson’s. For Rescher “physical existence is at bottom processual […], processes rather than things best represent the phenomena that we encounter in the natural world around us [PM 2]”. How can we adjudicate the conflict? What kind of arguments are relevant to settle the dispute? Lieven Decock marshals precise evidence from contemporary physics (quantum mechanics, general relativity theory, thermodynamics) which forces us to recognize that the category of substance has become obsolete in contemporary physics. Many traditional basic intuitions concerning particles, waves, space and time, or interactions have been progressively abandoned and the new intuitions provide a high degree of plausibility to philosophical theories which stress the processual character of nature. Decock however does not conclude that the processualist can win if he rests his case on twentieth century physics. The problem is that modern

14 physics has not merely substituted an ontology of processes to an ontology of substances. Physics has also become more and more mathematical. In the string theories, which physicists are developing to-day, mathematical considerations are weightier than philosophical intuitions. This leads Decock to conclude that metaphysicians should cease to worry about the ontology of physics and start worrying about the ontology of mathematics. Unquestionably this is a serious challenge to processualism. It seems difficult for a process philosophy to accommodate the static and eternal nature of mathematics. Decock undertakes to meet this challenge on the processualist’s behalf. He explores several alternatives to Platonism in mathematics: nominalism, naturalism and intuitionism. He shows that the first two way out are implausible and comes to the conclusion that intuitionism is the most compatible with processualism. Intuitionists have often been accused of depriving mathematicians of many important results. Decock rightly emphasises that intuitionists can retain many more findings of classical mathematics than philosophers usually think. The treatment of real numbers is a good example. There are indenumerably many real numbers. Hence it is not possible, to describe all real numbers with finite constructions of sequences. Yet Brouwer succeeds, as Decock shows, to give an acceptable account of points in the continuum. We cannot deny however that intuitionism forces us to prune some living branches of the mathematical tree. This might deter some philosophers from adopting process philosophy. At this stage it is worth mentioning that another way out exists. I am referring to a recent approach, inspired by Hilbert, which helps us retain the totality of classical mathematics without adopting Platonism. In Hilbert et la notion de l’existence en mathématique, Jacqueline Boniface shows how Hilbert drew a distinction between two types of mathematical existence: real existence and ideal existence. According to that view, objects axiomatically defined, such as the continuum, only enjoy an ideal existence. For instance, the actual infinite is fully recognized but it is given the status of an idea in the Kantian sense. This position was explicitly adopted in 1925 by Hilbert in his famous paper on the infinite from which the following quotation is borrowed: “[t]he role that remains to the infinite is, […] that of an idea— if, in accordance with Kant’s words, we understand by an idea a concept of reason that transcends all experience […] [Hilbert 1925, 1967, p. 392]”.

15 Hilbert’s and Boniface’s account of mathematics strikes me as very congenial to Rescher’s pragmatist idealism. Just like intuitionism, it provides us with an ontology of mathematics which is consistent with processualism. 3. Process and Particulars Considering the ontology of the medium-size physical objects that we come across in our every-day experience, we shall better see what is at stake in the process versus substance opposition if we examine the problem which arises when we embrace the moderate version of processualism defended by Quine. In “The Scope and Language of Science” written in 1954, Quine advocates an ontology inspired by the Minkowskian interpretation of Einstein’s relativity principle according to which space and time are distinguishable only relative to velocity. According to Quine, “[a] man is a four-dimensional object, extending, say eighty three years in the time dimension. Each spatiotemporal part of the man counts as another and smaller four dimensional object [Quine, 1976, p. 243]”. Returning to this topic in Word and Object, Quine makes it clear that physical objects conceived four-dimensionally in space-time are events or, “in the concrete sense of the term processes” [Quine, 1960, p. 171, emphasis is mine]. Quine’s quadrimensional conception of objects lessens philosophical perplexities which have been worrying philosophers for centuries. Consider Heraclitus’ claim that you cannot step in the same river twice because of the flowing of the water. Quine contends that as soon as the temporal extent of the river is put on a par with the spatial extent the problem vanishes. As he puts it, “we see no more difficulty in stepping into the same river at two times than at two places [Quine 1960, p. 171]”. Johanna Seibt rejects that way of meeting Heraclitus’ challenge. She complains that Quine’s type of solution concedes too much to Heraclitus. It forces us to acknowledge that we cannot step twice in the same river. We can only step in two stages of the river. Applying Quine’s solution of Heraclitus’ puzzle to two pictures of a man, one taken when he was a baby and the other when he was old, we would be forced to say that the baby is a little segment of the old man instead of saying that the two are identical. Surely this way of tampering with the identity relation “clashes with our common ways of reasoning about things” as Seibt rightly says.

16 A full answer of Heraclitus’ puzzle is given if we take up the radical processual approach which construes the flowing of a river as an activity made up out of homomerous parts. As Seibt puts it, “[a] ssuming I step into the Allegheny River on Tuesday and once again on Wednesday, we can easily say that the flowing which I step into on Wednesday is identical with the flowing I stepped into on Tuesday—what I step into on both occasions is one and the same activity p which occurs along the entire spatio-temporal extension R of the Allegheny and in each of the temporal parts of R [Seibt, p. 91]”. 4. Process and Universals As George W. Shields observes, Rescher concentrates on two kinds of universals : perceptual universals (such as fragrances or colours or sounds) and natural kinds. He does not explicitly mention mathematical kinds. For Rescher, as G. Shields puts it, universals are always “in principle repeatable structures or performances instanciated concretely in process”. Rescher advocates a conceptualist account of universals. The universal “green” is not an object occupying a Platonic heaven. It is rather a distinct process of perceiving or imagining greenly. Any mind capable of repeating just this perceptual or imaginative process can share the universal green. At this point, it is worth recalling Peirce’s view about natural kinds. As S. Haack reminds us, Peirce came to think that the adoption of a realist theory of natural kinds was needed to explain how science is possible. Formulating Peirce’s Extreme Scholastic Realism, she writes: “[i]f, when we classify these and those things together as stones, as men, as horses, etc., we are bringing together in the extension of our general term things which really are of a kind independently of our thought or our linguistic conventions, then the expectation is justified that a as-far-untested thing of a certain kind will behave in the same way as already observed things of that kind [Haack, 1992, p. 25]”. S. Haack reminds us that Peirce also advocated a realist account of natural laws. For Peirce, genuine laws “govern not only all actual, but all possible, instances which say what would happen if […]”. One might wonder whether the sharp distinction Peirce draws between natural laws and accidental generalities, or to put it briefly, the distinction between laws and facts is compatible with the processists’ contention that, as Nicholas Rescher puts it, “[…] process invades the world’s structure as well: the laws of nature too, are merely transitory stabilities that emerge at one phase of cosmic history only to lapse from

17 creation and give way to variant modes of operation in the fullness of time [PM 91]”. This question is suggested by an illuminating passage of George Shield’s chapter which stresses that process metaphysics makes room for what might be called“intrusive novelty”, a kind of novelty which cannot be reduced to the realization of pre-existing potentialities. The answer to the question suggested by Shields is affirmative. We can easily reconcile Peirce’s Extreme Scholastic Realism with the numerous passages in which the founder of Pragmatism adopts a processualist stance. The consistency is restored if we interpret Peirce’s sharp contrast between laws of nature and accidental generalities as holding when we look at the world from a synchronic, as opposed to a diachronic, standpoint. The diachronic standpoint is the perspective favoured by scientific cosmologists. As Rescher notes, “ [I]n the first nanosecond of cosmic evolution there is room only for the laws of physics—laws of chemistry came later on. And laws of biology—let alone of sociology and macroeconomics—emerge still later [Replies p. 293]”. New things, processes, states of affairs come to existence, but also new types of events and new laws, and even new possibilities. Rescher goes even further than Peirce. C. S. Peirce held that laws of nature are stable modes of operations that the universe has acquired over time but he acknowledged that once developed they were there for ever. Taking into account the prominence of chance and chaos in contemporary science, Rescher finds more plausible “to see the laws of nature as themselves pervasive processes, consisting in transitory (and thus mortal) regularity patterns that hold for large sections of space-time and then give way […] [PM 92]”. The recognition by Rescher that genuinely new structural kinds of processes emerge raises a very interesting question which Shield formulates in this passage: “[w]as the new kind—itself a possible— antecedently possible?”. Both the “Yes” and the “No” answers lead into trouble. Shield shows how a multimodal logic containing modal operators and temporal operators is expressive enough to represent the commonsense belief that something can be possible for a while and cease to be possible after a certain time. Presumably hybrid logic could also be brought to bear on this issue [Gochet 2004].

18 5. Philosophy of Nature Let us now focus on the portion of the philosophy of nature which deals with biology. Most contemporary philosophers take Darwinism for granted. For instance, Quine brings Darwinism to bear on the answer to the following question: “why does our innate subjective spacing of qualities accord so well with the functionally relevant groupings in nature as to make our inductions tend to come out right?”. His reply, which he relates to Darwin, reads as follows: “[c]reatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind [Quine, 199, p. 126]”. In the above-mentioned statement there is an overtone of compassion for these creatures which cannot produce progeny. Their gloomy fate is an unavoidable evil. Admittedly the good effects which result from the tendency of the unfit to disappear outrun the bad effects. Yet nowhere in Quine’s works, do we find the idea that the good could compensate the evil. Quine leaves open the possibility for values (be they positive like the good or negative like the evil) to be incommensurable. Rescher advocates a much wider conception of evolutionism. His process philosophy is evolutionist all the way down. It applies to all processes in the world and to the world itself. Rescher takes the risk of passing a value judgment on Reality as a whole. His judgment is decidedly optimistic. He regards nature’s microprocesses as components of an overall macroscopic process whose course is upward rather than downward. Pete A.Y. Gunter set out to critically examine Rescher’s bold commitment to an overall evolutionary progress in the light of the latest version of evolutionary theory in biology. He confronts Rescher’s idea of progress with contemporary biology’s stubborn refusal to allow that “progress” can mean anything other than“ differential reproduction”. Like most idealist thinkers, Rescher recognizes that science intends to reach reality ‘as it actually is’ but refuses to credit any scientific theories, however sophisticated they may be, with the merit of having achieved what a science aspires to. Rescher follows Kant. He posits a tantalising Ding an Sich which can be conceived of but which will never be known. Gunter wonders whether Rescher’s idealism can be reconciled with the idea of scientific progress. How can Rescher contend that science has genuine relevance to the world out there and at the same time wonder whether particulars like mesons and neutrinos, or any other entity which science will posit in the future, are ultimately real?

19 Urged to clarify his position on the matter, Rescher replied that fallibilism needs to be mitigated. Although we have to recognize that concepts are theory-laden and by the same token that they may have to be redefined when the theories they belong to are abandoned (think of “mass” in Newton’s physics and in Einstein’s physics), we can nevertheless claim that if we restrict ourselves to schoolbook science, we can know a good deal about nature. In other words, Rescher is led to recognize that schoolbook science gives us a picture of reality, though it is a picture of reality seen “through a glass, darkly”. This concession is unquestionably a decisive step towards scientific realism. Rescher seems to be ready to acknowledge that there are concepts which are not likely to be revised in the future and laws which are sufficiently well established to be immune to falsifiability (without for that matter being empty tautologies. [On Rescher’s theory of truth see Batens 1973]). 6. Process and Persons In chapter 6, Rescher argues that a processualist philosopher is better equipped to account for personhood than a proponent of substantialism. His discussion rests upon refreshingly new arguments and reckons with philosophical insights due to contemporary continental philosophers. Jean-Paul Sartre contended that, as far as men are concerned, existence precedes essence. In other words, men are ready to recognize that they have performed a wrong action but reluctant to recognize that they are wrong persons. They like to think that they are free agents, always capable of improvement, rather than things governed by laws. Rescher observes that the perspective of process philosophy displays an affinity with existentialism in so far as processists, like existentialists, wholly reject “the thing-ontologist’s view of a person as an entity existing separately from its actions, activities and experiences [PM 109]”. In their Reflections on Process and Persons, Harald Atmanspacher and Jack Martin rightly emphasize the role of socio-cultural factors in the constitution of the person. Rescher acknowledges that dimension of the ontogenesis of personhood. He acknowledges that we need persons to which we can impute responsibility. Fleeting processes cannot play the role of bearers of responsibility. There is room here for further development as Harald Atmanspacher and Jack Martin suggest.

20 In The Conception of Value, a book published posthumoulsy in 1991, Paul Grice developed a very original and deep theory of persons which puts the concept of substance to a new use. The question arises whether Grice’s philosophical findings can be reconciled with process metaphysics. Before answering this question, I shall recall some key ideas of Grice’s theory. Grice avails himself of the notion of essential property. Two characteristics isolate essential properties in Grice’s sense from other properties: (a) essential properties are defining properties of a kind, (b) they constitute the identity conditions for the entities that are members of that kind (i.e. members of a given kind cannot lose those properties without ceasing to exist). When the defining properties of a kind enter in the identity conditions for its members, the kind is said to be a substantial kind. With these definitions at hand, it is possible to describe a philosophically important sort of change, the change which occurs when a biological type (Homo sapiens) to which a given property (rationality) attaches non-essentially though predictably, gives rise to a cultural type (Person) to which that property attaches essentially. For animals living in a stable world, a suitable battery of instincts suffices to secure their survival. In a complex and highly instable world, where a creature’s survival depends on the ability to produce different reactions to a vast and varied range of stimuli, rationality understood as the ability to answer questions about how to reach ends with the means available is more efficient than a battery of instincts however large. This is a plausible evolutionary account of the emergence of the biological type Homo sapiens. Once rationality has been installed however, the members of the new substantial type Homo sapiens are “capable of raising more questions than the limited range of questions in the answering of which the logical utility of that rationality […] initially consists [Grice 1991, p. 85]. Exercising that ability they cease to restrict themselves to raising and answering questions about how certain ends are to be achieved. They are capable of asking questions about the intrinsic value of the ends themselves. By the time the members of the newly generated type Homo sapiens begin to worry about categorical imperatives as opposed to hypothetical imperatives, rationality acquires a new status. As Grice puts it “rationality, which originally […] attaches non-essentially to one substantial type, namely Homo sapiens, now attaches essentially to a different but

21 standardly coincident substantial type […] [Grice, Ibid., p. 87]. This new type is that of persons. To denote this process by which a substance S 1 turns into a substance S 2, Grice uses the word transubstantiation (which is a neologism, free of religious connotations). It is quite clear that Grice’s use of the notion of substance, far from being inconsistent with process philosophy, is in full agreement with it. The very notion of transubstantiation denotes a process. Grice has operated an Aufhebung in substance theory which makes it possible to integrate it to processualism. 7. Process Logic and Epistemology In Chapter 7, Rescher revisits applications of logic to ontological issues which have brought to the foreground important traits of reality which remained in the dark until logicians started to investigate them. In his de Interpretatione IX, Aristotle spelled out an elaborate argument purported to prove that we have to restrict the application of the logical principle of bivalence if we want to do justice to the fact that some future events (a sea-battle to-morrow) are contingent. In Deviant Logic, Fuzzy Logic, Susan Haack showed that Aristotle’s argument, under the most natural formalization, is marred by a hidden shift from logical consequentis to logical consequentiae which renders it invalid [Haack, 1974, 1995 p. 74-87]. Be that as it may, the argument was historically influential and led Łukasiewicz to invent a 3-valued logic to accommodate Aristotle’s difficulty. This is an interesting case of logic undergoing a change performed to do justice to an ontological feature of the world: contingency. Rescher does not restrict the truth-value indeterminacy to statements regarding future contingencies. On the contrary, he extends it to anything which is coming into existence or passing away. A plea for this far reaching extension is made in following passage: “the existential nebulous condition of that which is becoming (or is ceasing to be) at the precise juncture when it is entering into (or is exiting from) actual existence makes it plausible to see truth-value indeterminacy as implicated no less in becoming than in future contingency [PM 127]”. In his comment on chapter 7, Jacques Riche emphasizes that Zeno’s paradoxes provide Rescher with an even better test bed showing the explanatory power of a process metaphysics as opposed to substance metaphysics. If we reduce processes, which are continuous, to shifts from

22 one stage to another, we are confronted to the very same kind of problems as those raised by Zeno’s paradoxes about time and motion. Jacques Riche offers a new and illuminating account of the emergence of Zeno’s paradoxes. We know, Riche writes, “that a moving body only moves over a certain laps of time in some interval of space and that it cannot move at an instant over no interval because there is no such thing as time points and dimensionless intervals in the real world”. Epistemological, ontological and logical problems enter the scene when we start wondering about phenomena, mixing ordinary observational language with theoretical constructions. The paper shows how the problems related to the notions of space, motion, change, time and time point originated Ancient Philosophy and how they finally found a solution in Newton’s Calculus of fluxions. Another important contribution of Jacques Riche’s chapter is worth mentioning here. Over the last twenty years rigorous treatments of the dynamic aspects of natural language has been worked out. The way time and aspect are expressed in natural language has been closely examined. Events, which involve some change, have been distinguished from states, which do not. Riche shows how these new developments contributed to the introduction of a processual perspective in semantics. The static definition of meaning in terms of truth conditions has been replaced by a dynamic definition. As Frank Veltman puts it, “ [t]he slogan ‘you know the meaning of the sentence if you know the condition under which it is true’ is replaced by this one: ‘You know the meaning of a sentence if you know the change it brings about in the information state of anyone who accepts the news conveyed by it’ [Veltman 1996, p. 221]”. One of the more fruitful products of the dynamic turn in semantics which started more than twenty years ago is Kamp’s discourse representation theory. It is now currently applied by many field linguists. The reader will find in Jacques Riche’s paper a succinct but insightful presentation of Kamp’s theory. 8. Science, Process and History If we do not rest content with considering the finished products of scientific inquiry (observations and theories) but investigate the process of scientific production, new and interesting questions arise which bear witness to the fecundity of the processual approach to scientific inquiry presented by Rescher in the 8th chapter of Process Metaphysics.

23 To assess fully the novelty and originality of Rescher’s approach, it should be emphasized that he is not merely replacing a synchronic approach to science by a diachronic and developmental approach. Rescher does something more: he makes a structural analysis of the factors which drive progress in natural science. When philosophers are asked why we cannot predict the future of science, they often reply that predicting someone else’s future discovery is a priori impossible since it would amount to making the discovery oneself. Rescher offers a more elaborate reply: “[s]ince we cannot predict the answers to the presently open questions of natural science, we also cannot predict its future questions, seeing that these are generally engendered by the answers to those we have on hand [PM143]”. Unexpectedly Rescher’s processual approach to scientific inquiry has a bearing on metaphysical issues such as the ontological status of natural properties and natural kinds. Hanne Andersen should be praised for having brought to the foreground those hidden implications of the processual approach to scientific inquiry. On Rescher’s account, one of the main tasks of scientists consists in systematising phenomena and digging out underlying regularities. Performing these tasks requires of us the use of the notion of kind. As H. Andersen stresses, Rescher’s account of scientific kinds differs from the substantialist’s account. For Rescher the entities which qualify as members of kinds do so in virtue of their effects. More precisely, “the features that render category members similar or dissimilar are interactional properties [Andersen p. 172]”. For Aristotle, the change in a substance is described by the substance’s losing some properties and acquiring new ones. Callias was dark haired at a certain age. Later he became grey haired. Interactional properties are quite different. As H. Andersen puts it, “ […]instruments are sorting devices which differentiate between instances of different scientific kinds by determining specific features which differ for those kinds through the interaction between instruments and the purported kinds [Ibid.]”. Both the realist treatment of properties and the nominalist treatment are discarded. The interactional properties need not exist as properties prior to the existence of the instrument. Instead instruments may be used to discover new interactional properties and to establish new kinds. H. Andersen states that there may exist infinitely many potential similarities between equally many potential kinds. At this point a mathematical result due to Watanabe is worth mentioning (the ugly duck

24 theorem). In “Une Explication mathématique du classement d’objets”, Watanabe proved that unless we have a bias in favour of certain predicates, the number of predicates which are shared by two objects whatever they are, in so far as they are distinct, is a constant which does not depend on which pair of objects is at stake. Hence, contrary to what common sense teaches us, it is not true that two ravens share many more predicates than the two members of a pair made up of one raven and one sparrow [Watanabe 1962]. Presumably, H. Andersen would eschew Watanabe’s paradoxical result by defending the claim that certain predicates deserve to be given a privileged status. She would agree with Peirce’s distinction, mentioned in § 4, between natural kinds and arbitrary groupings. As she observes this position however goes hand in hand with the distinction between objective and arbitrary similarity relations. The former ones are, as she says, constitutive of the joints at which we carve the world into kinds. Se raises the interesting question of what comes first: similarity relation or natural kinds, a question discussed in Quine’s paper on “natural Kinds” [Quine 1969], which prompted Ian Hacking’s comments [Hacking 1990, 129143]. 9. Process Theology In Chapter 9, devoted to Process Theology, Rescher does not address the classical issues of rational theology. He does not investigate the proofs of God’s existence (ontological argument, argument of the first cause, argument from design) nor does he address the standard question of the compatibility of the existence of God with that of Evil. He does not claim either that process philosophy is more congenial to theism than substance theology. There are indeed non theistic process philosophies. The question Rescher raises is “assuming that a God along the Judeo-Christian tradition exists”, can process philosophy help us conceptualise him more intelligently than substance philosophy? Both Rescher and his commentator, the theologian John B. Cobb Jr. concede from the start that the theology of revealed religions such as Judaism or Christianity cannot be founded upon purely rational arguments. As Rescher says “[it] must transcend the reach of strictly philosophical considerations [Replies, p. 4]”. This does nor mean however that philosophical discussions about religion and theology are superfluous and useless.

25 The recent issue of the Revue internationale de Philosophie edited by Roger Pouivet and devoted to Analytic Philosophy of Religion brilliantly shows that philosophical reflection continues to illuminate and enliven theological discussions to the same extent as it enlivens and illuminates our understanding of scientific or moral issues [Pouivet 2003]. Process theology offers a neat solution to several major problems of Christian theology which arise when theology is formulated inside a substantialist philosophy. The first problem arises when we try to account for the way God, conceived as a spiritual agent, interacts with the material world. As Susan Haack observes in Defending Science-within reason, “[…] the problem with non-embodied agents is not that they are unobservable, but that they are non-embodied [Haack 2003, p. 284]”. In other words, the problem is not epistemological but rather ontological. In a process ontology the problem does not arise any longer since processes, as opposed to substances, “can conflate with and interpenetrate one another” [PM 159]. Rescher also shows that process metaphysics can accommodate a view of God as both personal and transcendent, who is present in the world but who is not of the world. His claim rests upon the following argument by analogy: “[…] once we have an account of personhood in general in process terms as a systemic complex of characteristic activities, it is no longer at all strange to see God in these terms as well [PM 157]”. Can we consistently ascribe to God the three attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence? Critics of Christian orthodoxy object that an omnipotent being who allows evil to overcome the good either fails to be omnipotent or fails to be omnibenevolent. To those who reply that evil (at least moral evil) was caused by men’s bad use of their freedom, they come up with another objection. If men are really free, they say, God cannot know their decisions in advance. Hence another attribute of God, namely prescience which is taken to be a component of omniscience, has to be abandoned. Moreover if God lacks prescience, his information changes with time, hence we have to give up yet another traditional attribute of God, namely immutability. The argument allows us to continue to hold that God is eternal, but forces us to renounce saying that he is tenseless. Rescher and Cobb agree to put some restrictions on the concepts of omniscience and omnipotence used to denote attributes of God. At first sight, one might think that they are moving in the direction of socinianism, an evangelical rationalist movement which grew into Unitarianism. This is not so however.

26 When Rescher, defending processism, argues that “the problem of Trinity with its mystery of fitting three persons into one being or substance” is a lesser source of perplexity for the proponent of process metaphysics than it is for a proponent of substance metaphysics, he clearly expresses a preoccupation which no Unitarianists would share since they do not believe in the divinity of Christ. 10. Process Philosophy In the final chapter of his book, Rescher comes to terms with a formidable objection to process philosophy, namely the charge of inconsistency sharply summed up in this question: “How can you say that everything changes and that the world has no permanent features when this condition of ever-changingness and impermanence is itself (according to your own theory) a permanent feature of reality? [PM 166]”. The question is addressed to the advocates of ontological processism. But Rescher’s main tenet is not ontological processism. It is rather epistemological processism, a doctrine encapsulated in this quotation: “[o]ur knowledge of fact is always in flux. It is not a thing, a definite corpus, but an ever-changing and ever-growing manifold of process [PM132]”. Anderson Weekes, who devotes his essay to chapter 10, underlines that for Rescher process is a predicate of the world qua known, not of reality an sich. Like Kant however, Rescher appeals to the regulative idea of reality, itself contentless, as a necessary precondition of there being any empirical discovery or intersubjective communication at all. Has Rescher succeeded in avoiding the peril of inconsistency by adopting an epistemological version of processism? If he concedes that “knowledge is ever changing” implies that all truths are revisable, he will get into trouble. Epistemological processism invites us to raise this question: “ Is the statement ‘all truths are revisable‘ itself revisable?. If we answer “Yes”, we are forced to assent to “some truth are not revisable”. If we say “No”, we are forced to concede that this very statement constitutes a counterexample to itself. There is however a well known remedy: Russell’s theory of Types invented in 1908. Russell’s strategy consists in banning certain totalities as illegitimate by applying the ‘vicious-circle-principle’ which states that no totality can contain a member defined in terms of itself. More formally, whatever contains an apparent variable must be of a different type from the

27 possible values of that variable; we will say that it is of a higher type [Russell, 1956, p. 75]. To put it briefly, Russell sets up a hierarchy of domains of values which he calls types. Rescher adopts a similar strategy. He locates the facts in nature and the facts about nature in different domains. This enables him to make exceptions to the universality of change. As he puts it:“[i]n saying that everything within nature changes, we need not deny that certain facts about nature (such as ‘Everything in nature changes’) may themselves hold changelessly true [PM167]”. In other words, empirical knowledge is revisable but transcendental knowledge (such as the meta-truth “All truths are revisable”) is not. Following in Weekes’ footsteps, I have laid much emphasis on Rescher’s epistemological processism but to give a well-balanced account, another trend of processism should be mentioned:the radical version of ontological processism. Rescher deliberately breaks with the Western tradition which focuses on things and middle-size physical objects. He ascribes ontological primacy to processes over substances. As Weekes stresses, Rescher’s claim that process is the most pervasive characteristic feature of reality applies to reality as it exists for us. Rescher remains completely agnostic about the nature of reality in itself. Rescher’s process philosophy is a tamed version which combines conceptual idealism with pragmatic realism. Rescher’s approach is both intelligible and appealing to mainstream analytic philosophy. There is however, as Weekes observes, another trend of process philosophy which is much more daring. This trend finds its source in Bergson, James and Whitehead. It embraces challenging ideas which bring it close to existentialism, apophatic theology and Eastern religions. Before yielding to the seductions of the daring version of processualism, it is worth our while to examine the way its supporters tackle a standard problem of philosophy, the problem of perception. For that purpose I shall bring together the account of perception given in 1896 by Henri Bergson, a representative of the ontological version of process philosophy and the account given in 1903 by George E. Moore, one of the founders of Analytic philosophy. In Matière et Mémoire, Bergson recognizes that our perceptions are memory-laden. He claims, however, that if we could eliminate the contribution of memory to perception we would pass from perception to matter, from the subject to the object and reach a stage in which

28 “perception coincides with the object perceived” [Bergson 1896]. We would, he adds,“ touch and penetrate” reality. The latter sentence is metaphorical and does not lend itself to an illuminating interpretation. Let us concentrate on the former. What does Bergson mean by “ coincides ”?. One might try to interpret “coincides with” as “is identical with”. This reading however is not admissible. Identity is not a sufficient condition of perception. From “Dr. Jekyll = Mr. Hyde”, it does not follow that Dr Jekyll perceives Mr Hyde. Nor does it follow that Dr Hyde (alias Mr Jekyll) perceives himself. In The Refutation of Idealism, published in 1903, G. E. Moore analyzed awareness as a dyadic relation which is not, however, the identity relation :“It is possible”, Moore writes, “that my awareness is blue as well as being of blue; but what I am quite sure of is that it is of blue [Moore, 1923, p. 26]”. Moore is trying to debunk Bradley’s idealist account of perception which, roughly speaking, construes the object of awareness as a mode of awareness. The relational account defended by Moore is obviously better than Bradley’s account. As opposed to Bradley’s, Moore’s account accommodates self-knowledge. Self-knowledge would be construed by Moore as a dyadic relation which happens to be reflexive. Nevertheless Moore’s analysis remains too rough. Self-knowledge is not an ordinary external relation like “being contemporary with oneself”. In 1919, a major step forward was made by Russell. In “On Propositions. What they are and how they mean”, Russell blends ideas borrowed from Brentano’s theory of intentionality with ideas due to Wittgenstein and defines belief as a propositional attitude involving three components (a) a proposition (b) a feeling of assent and (c) a relation between the feeling of assent and the proposition. In An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, published in 1940, Russell ascribes a logical form to propositional attitudes which has become standard since. He gives belief-sentences the logical form “a believes (knows, fears, desires…) that p ”, i.e. “aKp” [Russell 1940, p. 168]”. In 1962, Hintikka published his epoch-making book Knowledge and Belief, in which the first system of epistemic logic covering propositional and predicate logic is spelled out. It contains the tools needed to give a logical analysis of the state of self-awareness. [For a an account of propositional epistemic logic, see [Rescher 1969, 2002]. In 1966, Hintikka published “ ‘Knowing oneself’ and other problems in epistemic logic” in which the knowledge of objects, such as the self, is derived from the knowledge of a proposition. Explaining this

29 would take us to far a field. To make a long story short let me say that the sentence “Alberta knows of herself that she is Alberta” is given the logical form : (Ex) (x = a & Ka (x = a)) i.e. “There is someone who is Alberta and who knows to be Alberta”. The formalization mentioned above is not merely a paraphrase. A truth-conditional semantics is now available for epistemic logic together with a proof system which is both correct and complete. In the late nineties, Jelle Gerbrandy and W. Groeneveld, Alexandru Baltag, Larry Moss and S. Solecki made a step further and worked out a logical treatment of epistemic actions (such as learning, teaching) as opposed to epistemic states. Later Vincent Hendricks defined the notion of “active epistemic agent”. The significance of their findings is clear. A logical analysis of knowledge understood as a process has thus finally been given [see Gochet and Gribomont, forthcoming]. With benefit of hindsight we have to recognize that Bergson’s approach quickly reached stalemate. Moore’s approach, on the contrary, gave rise to a sequence of improvements. We should be cautious here and refrain from concluding that this case study establishes once for all the superiority of the analytic method favoured by tamed processualists like Rescher over metaphysical intuition exploited by radical processualists. I have only tried to shift the burden of proof. To bring to completion the task of constructing a logic for process philosophy, it is not enough to provide a rigorous treatment of the process of acquiring knowledge or communicating knowledge. An appropriate formalism should also be built up to capture the ontological process of becoming. This programme is on the agenda of process philosophy. A decisive step has been taken by Roberto Poli in his comment on Rescher’s appendix. Appendix. Process Semantics Rescher pays due attention to unowned processes (the cooling of the temperature, the change in climate…) which are best expressed by impersonal or subjectless sentences. These sentences fly in the face of the supporters of the Aristotelian analysis of propositions. They fail to say something about something. How can we describe a world in perpetual processes with the static categories inherited from Aristotle (bivalence, predicative structure)? Roberto Poli should be praised for having addressed this difficult question in Process Semantics and started to forge the

30 mathematical tools we need to solve it. Poli’s logical analysis of the logical differences between genuine becoming and mere state transitions is an important step forward in the right direction. A lesson we learn from Poli’s paper is that our concern for process does not force us to regard classical logic as obsolete and to embrace some kind of deviant logic as an alternative to classical logic. What we have to do instead is to revise the dominant position of classical logic in the configuration of all the logic available to-day. In the mathematical framework of category theory which Poli claims to be a promising tool for processualists, classical logic is not abandoned. It is merely downgraded to the position of a local logic.

31 References Baltag A., Moss, L. S., and Solecki. 1998. “The logic of public announcements, common knowledge and private suspicions”. In Proceedings of the international conference TARK 1998, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 43-56. Barret, Robert and Gibson, Roger. 1990. Perspectives on Quine (Oxford: Basil Blackwell). Batens, Diderik. 1973, “Rescher’s Coherence Theory of Truth”, Logique et Analyse, 63-64, p.393-411. Boniface, Jacqueline. 2004. Hilbert et la notion d’existence en mathématiques (Paris: Vrin). Bergson, Henri. 1988. Matter and Memory. Authorized Translation by Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer (New York: Zone Books). Gabbay, Dov and Woods, John. Forthcoming. Handbook of History and Philosophy of Logic , vol. 9. (Amsterdam: Elsevier). Gerbrandy J. and Groeneveld W. 1997 “Reasoning about information change”. Journal of Logic, Language and Information , 6: 147-169. Gochet, Paul. “Hybrid Logic”. In Suzuki, 2004, 6-9. Gochet, Paul and Gribomont, Pascal. “Epistemic Logic”. Forthcoming in: Handbbok of History and Philosophy of Logic. Edited by Dov Gabbay and John Woods. Vol. 9 (Amsterdam: Elsevier). Grice, Paul. 1991. The Conception of Value. With an Introduction by Judith Baker (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Haack, Susan.“’Extreme Scholastic Realism’: Its relevance to Philosophy of Science Today” In:Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 1992, Vol. XXVIII, 19-50. Haack, Susan. 1974, 1996. Deviant Logic, Fuzzy Logic (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press). Haack, Susan. 2003. Defending Science-within reason (New York: Prometheus Books). Hacking, Ian. “Natural Kinds”. In: Barret and Gibson 2000, 129-141. Heijenoort van, Jean. 1967, From Frege to Gödel (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press). Hendricks, Vincent. F. Forthcoming. Forcing Epistemology. Hilbert, David. “On the infinite” In: van Heijenoort 1967, 367-392. Hintikka, Jaakko. 1962. Knowledge and Belief (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press). Hintikka, Jaakko. “‘Knowing onself’ and others problems in epistemic logic” In: Theoria 1966,Vol. 13, 1-13. Jacquette, Dale. 2002. A Companion to Philosophical Logic (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers). Ladrière, Jean. 1976 “L’abîme” In Savoir, faire, espérer (Bruxelles: Publications des Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis) tome 1, 171-191. Moore, George. E. “The Refutation of Idealism” In: Mind , reprinted In: Moore, George. E. 1922, Philosophical Studies (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul) 1-30.

32 Pouivet, Roger. (guest editor) Analytic Philosophy of Religion In: Revue internationale de Philosophie 2003, vol. 57. Quine, W. V. “The Scope and Language of Science”, 1954 reprinted in Quine, W. V. The Ways of Paradox, Revised and enlarged edition (Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press), 228-245. Quine,W.V. 1960, Word and Object (Massachussetts: M.I.T.Press & New York:Wiley). Quine,W.V. “Natural Kinds” In Quine, W. V. 1969, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York (New York: University Press) 114-138. Rescher, Nicholas. 1968, Topics in Philosophical Logic (Dordrecht: D.Reidel) Rescher, Nicholas. “Epistemic Logic” in Jacquette 2002, 478-490. Russell, Bertrand. “Mathematical Logic as Based on The Theory fo Types” In American Journal of Mathematics 1908, reprinted In Russell, Bertrand, 1956. Logic and Knowedge, edited by Robert C. Marsh (London: Allen & Unwin) 57-102. Russell, Bertrand.“On Propositions; what they are and how they mean” 1919. In Russell, Bertrand. 1956. Logic and Knowedge, edited by Robert C. Marsh (London:Allen & Unwin) 285-320. Russell, Bertrand. 1940, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (London: Allen & Unwin). Strawson, Peter F. 1969, Individuals (London: Methuen & Co). Suzuki, Nobu-Yuki. 2004. Proceedings of the 37th MLG meeting at Shizuoka, Japan 2003. Veltman, Franck “Defaults in Update Semantics” In Journal of Philosophical Logic 1996, vol. 25, 221-261. Watanabe, S. 1962 “Une explication mathématique du classement d’objects”. In Information et Prédiction (New York:Academic Press) 39-76.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The present endeavour to contextualise the different analyses Nicholas Rescher masterfully weaves into his Process Metaphysics and to circumscribe most of their ramified implications would not have been possible without the scholarly professionalism of all the contributors to this volume. Of course—ab Jove principium—, it is primarily to Nicholas Rescher himself that my thanks are due. Without his involvement, the present speculative adventure could not have been so rich with new possible synergies. This book has also benefited from the punctual help of various scholars and friends. Among them two stand out: Johanna Seibt and Anderson Weekes. Both have provided not only continuous support with regard to the inevitable contingencies involved in such a project, but also a high level of painstaking scholarly feedback on the contributions themselves. I am also genuinely grateful to Pauline Amelia Nivens, who has kindly helped me to homogenize the manuscript linguistically. Special thanks are due to Dr. Reiner Wiehl, whose paper “Process Philosophy and the Problem of Universals,” written initially as a contribution to this volume, will be published in a forthcoming Festschrift dedicated to his own works and published by ontos verlag, thanks, once again, to the support of Dr. Rafael Hüntelmann. For making me the honour of writing the Preface, Paul Gochet deserves as well the expression of my most sincere gratitude. It is furthermore a pleasure to emphasise my deep, ongoing intellectual debt, contracted since graduate school, for Jean Ladrière and Marcel Crabbé, who have never failed to provide, as much as they could, the best spiritual (and material) conditions for my work. The French-speaking reader may be pleased to hear that my translation of Rescher’s most significant process works is slotted for publication in the near future: Nicholas Rescher, Essais sur les fondements de l'ontologie du procès. M.W.

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Hanne Andersen (Ph.D.) is associate Professor at the Department of Medical Philosophy and Clinical theory, University of Copenhagen [Panum Institute, Blegdamsvej 3, DK-2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark; ]. She previously was curator at the Danish National Museum for the History of Science and Medicine. Among her publications are several articles on scientific change and a book on the philosophy of Thomas S. Kuhn (On Kuhn, Wadsworth 2001). Harald Atmanspacher studied physics in Göttingen, Zürich, and München and received his Ph.D. in physics 1985 at the University of München. From 1986 to 1988 Reimar Lüst fellow, since then research scientist in the theory division at the Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik in Garching/München. Since 1998 head of the department for theory and data analysis at the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene in Freiburg [Wilhelmstr. 3a, 79098 Freiburg, Germany; ]. Since 2002 associate member of the Max-Planck Centre for Interdisciplinary Plasma Science, Garching, and staff member of the International Solvay Institutes for Physics and Chemistry, Brussels. Current main fields of work and interest: nonlinear dynamics; complex systems; psychophysical problem; selected topics in the history and philosophy of science. Lieven Decock graduated in physics and philosophy in 1992 at the University of Leuven, worked until 1996 as a researcher in the astronomy department. From 1997 to 1999 assistant at the Centre of Logic. Ph.D. promotion in December 1999 on a thesis dealing with Quine's ontology. Currently teaches philosophy in Tilburg [Faculty of philosophy, Tilburg University, Postbox 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg; The Netherlands]. Editor of Quine. Naturalized Epistemology, Perceptual Knowledge, and Ontology in the Poznan Studies of the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, 2000, Rodopi.

36 Author of Trading Ontology for Ideology. The Interplay of Logic, Set Theory and Semantics in Quine's Philosophy, 2002, Kluwer. John B. Cobb, Jr. (Ph.D.) is Professor emeritus from the Claremont School of Theology and the Claremont Graduate University (Ca.) [private: 777 Cambridge Way, Claremont, CA 91711, U.S.A.; ]. He continues active as a co-director of the Center for Process Studies. Among his books are Process Theology: an Introductory Exposition (with David Griffin), For the Common Good (with Herman Daly) and The Process Perspective: Frequently Asked Questions about Process Theology. Paul Gochet (Ph.D.) is Professor emeritus from the University of Liège (Belgium) [home address: 78 Boulevard Louis Schmidt bte 35, 1040 Brussels, Belgium; ]. His main publications are: Outline of a Nominalist Theory of Propositions (Reidel, Dordrecht, 1980) and Ascent to Truth, A critical Examination of Quine's Philosophy (Philosophia Verlag, Munich, 1986). He has also written with Pascal Gribomont Logique, vol. 1 (Paris, Hermès Lavoisier, 1990-1991-1998) and vol. 2 (1994), with Pascal Gribomont and André Thayse, vol. 3 (2000). Forthcoming in the Handbook of History and Philosophy of Logic, Dov Gabbay and John Woods (Eds.), with Pascal Gribomont, is Epistemic Logic (Elsevier, Amsterdam). Pete A. Y. Gunter took a B.A. at the University of Texas (1958), a second B.A. at Cambridge University (1960); a Ph.D. at Yale University (1963) Philosophy majors throughout. His books include Bergson and the Evolution of Physics (1969); Henri Bergson: a Bibliography (1974, 2nd Ed. 1986); Bergson and Modern Thought (1987). His essays and reviews on the Philosophy of A.N. Whitehead have been published in Process Studies, Interchange, Process Papers, and The Humanist. He is curently Professor of Philosophy at North Texas State University [Denton, TX 76203-6526, U.S.A.; ] and president of the Association for Process Philosophy of Education. Michael Hampe (Ph.D.) is Professor of Philosophy at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich [Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich; ]. He studied Philosophy, Biology and Psychology in Heidelberg and Cambridge, and has taught Philosophy in Heidelberg, Trinity College Dublin, Kassel and Bamberg University before he came to the ETH Zürich. He has published on Whitehead, the

37 metaphysics of pragmatism and the philosophical problems of psychology and biology. His latest book Spekulation und Handlung (forthcoming) is a collection of his essays on pragmatists metaphysics. Jack Martin studied psychology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and received his Ph.D. in psychology there in 1973. At present, he is Burnaby Mountain Endowed Professor for the Psychology of Education at Simon Fraser University [Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6, Canada; ]. He held distinguished visiting professorships at Ball State University and Deakin University, and recently received the George Miller Award for outstanding contributions to general psychology from the American Psychological Association. Roberto Poli is Adjunt Professor at the University of Trento [Dpt. di sociology and social research, 26 verdi str. 38100 Trento, Italy; ]. He graduated in Sociology (B.A., with honors) at the University of Trento (Italy) in 1980 and obtained a Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Utrecht (The Netherlands) in 2001. He is editor-in-chief of Axiomathes (Kluwer), a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to the study of ontology and cognitive systems, member of the editorial boards of Dialogikon (Cracow) and Western Philosophy Series (Ashgate). Poli is member of the board of director of the Mitteleuropa Foundation (Bolzano), a recently established research centre in ontology and cognitive analysis. He has published 4 books, edited or coedited 18 volumes and more than 100 papers in the fields of ontology (in both the traditional, philosophical, and the new, computer science oriented, interpretations) and CentralEuropean philosophy (Brentano, Meinong, Twardowski and Husserl). Nicholas Rescher is University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh where he also served for many years as Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science. He has served as a President of the American Philosophical Association, of the American G. W. Leibniz Society, and of the C. S. Peirce Society and is currently president of the American Catholic Philosophy Association and president-elect of the American Metaphysical Society. An honorary member of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he has been elected to membership in the European Academy of Arts and Sciences (Academia Europaea), the Institut International de Philosophie, and several other learned academies. Having held visiting lectureships at Oxford, Constance, Salamanca, Munich, and Marburg, Professor Rescher has received six honorary degrees from

38 universities on three continents. Author of some hundred books ranging over many areas of philosophy, over a dozen of them translated into other languages, he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Prize for Humanistic Scholarship in 1984. Jacques Riche studied philosophy and linguistics at the University of Louvain and received his Ph.D. in logic from the Australian National University. He works on logic and artificial intelligence at the University of Leuven [private: 50, rue du château, 6150 Anderlues, Belgium; . Johanna Seibt received her education at Munich (MA) and Pittsburgh (Ph.D.) and taught for ten years at the University of Texas at Austin. Currently she is a Post-Doc Fellow of the Danish Research Council at the University of Aarhus [Department of Philosophy, Bygning 328, Ndr. Ringgade, 8000 C Aarhus, Denmark; ]. Her main publications are in ontology, metaphysics, and the history of logical positivism. George W. Shields received the Ph.D. from The University of Chicago and has done further work at Oxford University. He is currently the 20002001 University Distinguished Professor, Professor of Philosophy, and Chair of the Division of Literature, Languages, and Philosophy at Kentucky State University [Frankfort, Kentucky 40601 USA; ]. His most recent book project is (as coauthor/editor) Process and Analysis: Whitehead, Hartshorne, and the Analytic Tradition (Albany: SUNY Press, 2003). He has published widely in peer-reviewed American and British philosophical journals and anthologies. Michel Weber holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium), where he is currently “membre coopté” of the Centre de logique [Collège Mercier, 14 place Mercier, 1348 Louvain-laNeuve; ]. His research program mainly consists of developing the activities of three networks he has created with his peers : the “Chromatiques whiteheadiennes,” the “European William James Project” and the “Whitehead Psychology Nexus.” He is editor of the Chromatiques whiteheadiennes series and co-editor of the European Studies in Process Thought.

39 Anderson Weekes holds a Doctorate in philosophy from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Trained in Ancient Philosophy, German Idealism, and Phenomenology, his research interests are not limited by school, period, or tradition. His current research focusses on the history of concepts of causation and their skeptical critique in different intellectual traditions. He is Secretary of the Whitehead Psychology Nexus. [c/o M. Weber, Collège Mercier, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve; ]

INTRODUCTION PROCESS METAPHYSICS IN CONTEXT Michel Weber (Louvain-la-Neuve)

Abstract This prefatory note consists of five contextualizing sections. First, Rescher’s Process Metaphysics is introduced; second, this volume’s goal is set in context; third, the scholarly boundaries of process thought are mapped; fourth, the historical depth of the field is questioned; and fifth, the continuist/discontinuist debate is rekindled.

1. The Book When, in 1996, Nicholas Rescher’s Process Metaphysics (hereafter PM; see the “Key to Abbreviations” of Rescher’s works) was published, it was widely acclaimed as a major step towards the academic recognition of a “mode of thought” that has otherwise been confined within quite sharp scholarly boundaries—if not sometimes despised. The book divides into ten complementary chapters and one appendix: I, “Historical Background”; II, “Basic Ideas”; III, “Process and Particulars”; IV, “Process and Universals”; V, “Process Philosophy of Nature”; VI, “Process and Persons”; VII, “Process Logic and Epistemology”; VIII, “A Processual View of Scientific Inquiry”; IX, “Process Theology”; X, “Process in Philosophy”; Appendix: “Process Semantics.” What is a “process”?, what are its modalities and the key-concepts necessary for its explication?, how do traditional categories such as universals and particulars react in this new medium of thought? These are some of the questions addressed here. PM is a dense, thought-provoking work that aims to provide a “synoptic, compact, and accessible exposition” (PM 1) of the process approach. Such a threefold goal carries of course a

42 very heavy burden: providing an introduction to a variegated philosophical perspective that is both historically accurate and philosophically sound, both showing the genesis and the cogency its of pivotal features (i.e., accurately reflecting the vicissitudes of its historical genesis while achieving the synchrony of a coherent perspective) is by no means an easy feat. If one furthermore wishes to propose a concise (sharp-edged, straightforward) text tailored for (under)graduates as well as “confirmed” philosophers, the challenge is even greater. Sometimes a cursory exposition is the best way to lure more research; sometimes a step by step development is more apt to let meaning crystallise. PM’s main thesis is bold enough: it claims that if there is such a thing as a “provocative and fertile” process philosophy, “it must pivot not on a thinker but on a theory” (PM ix and 8). In other words, process thinking cannot be restricted to any philosopher; it has an idiosyncratic standpoint—a relative conceptual ideality (or signature)—that can be clearly identified and should be developed in all areas of philosophy (understood broadly). Its basic idea is that actuality is process-like rather than substance-like. Whence the importance of the categories of creativity, innovation, novelty, change and historicity. PM provides nothing less than a wide programmatic argument to actualize this thesis. The papers gathered here amply show the depth of Rescher’s vision, which systematically reveals both the intrinsic worth of the process paradigm and the amount of work that remains to be done if “process thought” is to stand on its own vis-à-vis the more “traditional” or “established” forms of philosophizing. Rescher is the first to acknowledge this; and all the critical papers below cast some adventurous light on the debate about just what it is that needs to be done. 2. The Present Volume of Essays on PM Of course PM is not an easy book. Despite its stylistic clarity, it remains the complex outcome of a life’s work in most areas of philosophy. More precisely, the Author’s interest in process philosophy was initiated in 1949 by Walter Terrence Stace’s (1886–1967) seminar in Princeton: PM is thus the late rumbling of the thunder, as Walter Benjamin would say1. No doubt Rescher would actually agree with Whitehead when he claims that

1

See his early “The Revolt Against Process”, Journal of Philosophy, 59, 1962, pp. 410-417.

43 Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilisation of knowledge. This is an art very difficult to impart. Whenever a textbook is written of real education worth, you may be quite certain that some reviewer will say that it will be difficult to teach from it. Of course it will be difficult to teach from it. If it were easy, the book ought to be burned; for it cannot be educational. In education, as elsewhere, the broad primrose path leads to nasty places.2 What matters is the adventure of thought, its erotetics as Rescher would say, not the hammering down of a locked framework preventing any speculative—or even spiritual—peripeteia. The goal of the present volume is to systematically explore the strengths and weaknesses of PM, and thereby to clarify the contemporary state of affairs in process thought. Hence, the editor has chosen to gather one focused contribution per chapter, each paper addressing specifically and explicitly its assigned chapter and seeking to promote a dialogue with Rescher. In addition, Rescher himself has kindly agreed to respond to the papers. One hopes that this work will, in turn, occasion some fine-tuning by all, and that newcomers will enter the dialogue as well. The contributions to this volume thus proceed from the same basic wager as PM: placing their bets on the processual worldview, they are searching for its marrow. As far as possible, the authors have worked within the strict boundaries imposed by PM’s thesis. In other words, this is a “companion-style” volume rather than a Festschrift. It could be read before, after, or—even better—together with PM. Readers who wish to inquire further should also be aware that PM is part of a wider project by no means disrupting Rescher’s systematic worldview as disclosed in his previous works (as A. Weekes’ paper very acutely shows) and whose Process Philosophy (2000), Nature and Understanding (2000) and Inquiry Dynamics (2000) constitute late developments. 3. Scholarly Boundaries We have alluded to sharp scholarly boundaries: “process thought” is—or used to be—, somewhat by definition, the legacy of Alfred North Whitehead’s (1861–1947) corpus, and this legacy found its place mainly in

2

Whitehead, Organisation of Thought, pp. 9-10; reprinted in Aims of Education, p. 4 (see the Bibliography for the complete references).

44 the US among philosophers with theological goodwill, if not full-fledged theologians (mainly Protestants, often Methodists). Historically, Whitehead, after having taught mathematics and mathematical physics— first at Trinity College (Cambridge, U.K.) and later at Imperial College of Science and Technology (London, U.K.)—, was invited in 1924 to join the Philosophy Faculty of John Harvard University (Cambridge, U.S.A.), where he had the opportunity to develop a very personal worldview that he himself called “the philosophy of the organism” (a concept especially present in his trilogy Science and the Modern World/Process and Reality/Adventures of Ideas). The propagation of Whiteheadian process thought outside Harvard was probably first due to Henry Nelson Wieman (1884–1975), who did not study under Whitehead but introduced, as early as 1926, the standpoint of Religion in the Making (the Lowell Institute Lectures of 1926, published that same year) in Chicago’s Divinity School, whose tradition was, from its founding in 1890 by William Rainey Harper (1856–1906) until the early 1950s, empirical theology.3 There has been, as a result, a steady interest in Whitehead among theologians, first at the University of Chicago, later at the Claremont School of Theology (Claremont, California). Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000), Daniel Day Williams (1910–1971), Bernard MacDougall Loomer (1912–1985)—who is likely to have coined the term “process thought”4—and Bernard Eugene Meland (1899–1993) rank among the first wave of these impressive Whitehead-inspired scholars. In the sixties emerged John B. Cobb, Jr. (1925–) and Schubert M. Ogden (1928–). Cobb’s Christian Natural Theology (1965)5 remains a landmark

3

Cf., e. g.: Charles Harvey Arnold, Near the Edge of the Battle: A Short History of the Divinity School and the “Chicago School of Theology” 1866-1966, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, The Divinity School Association, 1966; and Bernard Eugène Meland (ed.), The Future of Empirical Theology, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1969.

4

Cf. Bernard MacDougall Loomer, “Process Theology: Origins, Strengths, Weaknesses”, Process Studies 16:4, pp. 245-254. According to David Ray Griffin (personnal communication), the first occurrence of the term is to be found in Loomer’s “Christian Faith and Process Philosophy”, The Journal of Religion 29, 1949, pp. 181-203 (Reprinted in Delwin Brown, Ralph E. James, Jr., and Gene Reeves, Process Philosophy and Christian Thought, Indianapolis and New York, Bobbs-Merrill, 1971, pp. 70-98).

5

John B. Cobb, Jr., A Christian Natural Theology Based on the Thought of Alfred North Whitehead, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, The Westminster Press, 1965.

45 in the field. The journal Process Studies was created in 1971 by Cobb and Lewis S. Ford (1933–); the Center for Process Studies was created 1973 by Cobb and David Ray Griffin (1939–) in Claremont. The result of these developments was that Whiteheadian process scholarship has acquired, and kept, a fair visibility only in natural theology. Whitehead’s philosophical legacy, although being pretty much alive, remained far more scattered. Willard Van Orman Quine (1908– 2000), the most famous of Whitehead’s students with Bertrand Russell (1872–1970)—and who belongs after all to the formative phase of a new (analytical) ontology6—did not follow the speculative path of his mentor. Neither did Paul Weiss (1901–2002), who apparently finally repudiated completely the philosophy of organism. Other past students like William Ernest Hocking (1873–1966), Filmer Stuart Cuckow Northrop (1893– 1992), Suzanne Katherina (Knauth) Langer (1895–1985), Victor Augustus Lowe (1907–1988), Joseph Gerard Brennan (1910–1977), Max Harold Fisch (1901–1995) or Allison Heartz Johnson (1910–1973) never kept the argumentative pressure high enough—or federated their efforts enough— to promote the ideas of their teacher the way theologians did. Neither did prominent philosophers like Wilbur Marshal Urban (1873–1952), Sydney Ernest Hooper (1880–1966), Lizzie Susan Stebbing (1885–1943), William Armistead Christian (1905–1997), Milič Čapek (1909–1997), Ivor Leclerc (1915–1999), William Norris Clarke (1915–), Nathaniel Morris Lawrence (1917–1986), George Louis Kline (1921–), Walter Eliott Stokes, s.j. (1923–1969) or Robert Monroe Palter (1924–). From a European perspective, there was a very significant and early Whiteheadian influence on the works of outstanding scholars like Henri Bergson (1859–1941), Émile Meyerson (1859–1933), Louis Couturat (1868–1914), Jean Wahl (1888–1974), Robin George Collingwood (1889– 1943), Philippe Devaux (1902–1979), Hans Jonas (1903–1993), Dorothy M. Emmett (1904–2000), Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961), Enzo Paci (1911–1976), Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971), Wolfe Mays (1912–), Ilya Prigogine (1917–2003), Jules Vuillemin (1920–2001), Jean Ladrière (1921–), Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995), Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928–) and Reiner Wiehl (1929–), but all have kept their own speculative trajectory. (Russell’s case is undoubtedly too complex to be addressed here.) Leuven’s Center for Metaphysics shelters, since 1977, Whiteheadian archives established, with the help of Claremont’s Center for Process 6

Cf. Lieven Decock’s Trading Ontology for Ideology. The Interplay of Logic, Set Theory and Semantics in Quine's philosophy (Dordrecht, Kluwer, 2002).

46 Studies, by Jan Van der Veken (1932–) and used to be the barycenter of the European Society for Process Thought (created in 1978, on the occasion of the bestowal of a honorary doctorate to Hartshorne). 4. Historicity of Process Thought Most philosophers have the Aristotelian tendency to put their own framework within the scope of at least some of their predecessors’ views. Process scholars are no exception here: they have been tempted to expand the process horizon to thinkers such as (e.g.) Heraclitus, Aristotle, Plotinus, Duns Scotus, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, David Hume, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, Gustav Theodor Fechner, Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, Charles Renouvier, Karl Marx, Ernst Mach, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Émile Boutroux, Henri Bergson, Samuel Alexander, John Dewey, Nicolas Berdyaev, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.7 It seemingly remains an open question whether major “Continental” figures like the late Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, or Jacques Derrida should be included (and indeed they are absent from PM). How far is this historical federation coherent? 4.1. No doubt that process thought, as Rescher argues, constitutes a significant part of American philosophy. But how much further can we historically go? Usually, the case was made as a matter of evidence; Rescher takes the historico-speculative bull by the horns and provides a set of highly suggestive transhistorical categories: processual primacy and processual priority (PM 2-3, 27-34, 42-46, 90, 115); product-productive processes and state-transformative processes (PM 41; cf. 31-40); owned and unowned processes (PM 42-46, 49, 63); processes and dispositions (PM 46-49, 107, 110); causal processism and conceptual processism (PM 57-60; cf. 48, 115); novelty, emergence, innovation and creativity (PM 3132, 35, 40, 74-78, 80-82, 90, 93, 96-97, 98-103, 121, 133-134, 156, 159). The question thus becomes: how far is Rescher’s thesis about the transhistoricality of process thought actualizable through these categories?

7

Cf. Charles Hartshorne, “Ideas and Theses of Process Philosophers” (in Lewis S. Ford (ed.), Two Process Philosophers. Hartshorne's Encounter with Whitehead, Tallahassee, Florida, American Academy of Religion, AAR Studies in Religion, Number Five, 1973, pp. 100-103) and Charles Hartshorne and William L. Reese (editors), Philosophers Speak of God (Chicago & London, The University of Chicago Press, 1953).

47 In other words, are these categories really meta-categories, concepts providing an univocal heuristical grid? An immediate objection would be the idiosyncrasy of each and every system as it took place in a particular historical (i.e., cultural) context. Could the Heraclitean flux possibly be the same as Sheldon’s process? The Author’s apriorism reminds us (besides Kant of course) of the later speculations of Hartshorne—who, inspired by Cohen’s “Law of Polarity,” speaks of “categorially universal contrasts” or “ultimate or metaphysical contrarieties”8. A fallacy of the type of the “perfect dictionary”9 is to be feared—something already problematic in the context of “classical ontology,” but even more burdensome in the “process” area. If there is indeed a history of ideas in the strong sense of the word, there has to be a continual shift of perspective, simply because of that very creative advance it presupposes. It is impossible to bath oneself in the exact same conceptual atmosphere twice. “We live, as it were, upon the front edge of an advancing wave-crest.”10 To this Rescher answers that a trans-historical and cross-cultural heuristic grid is applicable because one should distinguish between the philosophical doctrine or position on the one hand, and the philosophical approach or tendency on the other: “The one is a specific and definite substantive position, the other a generic and potentially diffuse doctrinal tendency. And it is, of course, mistaken to look for doctrinal unanimity within any broad philosophical tendency.” (PP44-45) Moreover, he does not argue for anything like a “mysterious and experientially inaccessible unifying substantial object” along the lines of Kant's transcendental ego (PM 109, cf. PP16 and 109). No doubt Rescher acknowledges the need for a transcendental argument, for a Kantian quest of the “transcendental conditions of experience” (think of his conceptual

8

Charles Hartshorne, Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method, London, SMC Press, Ltd, 1970, esp. chap. VI.

9

In Whitehead’s words, “it is widely held that a stable, well-known philosophic vocabulary has been elaborated, and that in philosophic discussion any straying beyond its limits introduces neologisms, unnecessary, and therefore to be regretted” (Adventures of Ideas, pp. 228-229).

10

William James, Essays in Radical Empiricism [Posthumously published by Ralph Barton Perry], New York, London, Bombay, and Calcutta, Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912, p. 69. Of course, as we will see below, the creative advance needs not only difference but also repetition.

48 idealism), but “the fundamental intention to deal with the objective order of this ‘real world’ is crucial.” (PP93)11 In sum: The primary validation of that crucial objectivity postulate roots in its basic functional utility in relation to our cognitive aims. For—to summarize—we need that postulate of an objective order of mind-independent reality for at least six important reasons. (1) To preserve the distinction between true and false with respect to factual matters and to operate the idea of truth as agreement with reality. (2) To preserve the distinction between appearance and reality, between our picture of reality and reality itself. (3) To serve as a basis for inter-subjective communication. (4) To furnish the basis for a shared project of communal inquiry. (5) To provide for the fallibilistic view of human knowledge. (6) To sustain the causal mode of learning and inquiry and to serve as basis for the objectivity of experience. (NU112) We have thus, on the one hand, the inherent functional presuppositions of our conceptual schemes; and, on the other, the world of “real things,” the opacity of the concrete: The domain of fact inevitably transcends the limits of our capacity to express it, and a fortiori those of our capacity to

11

“The fundamental intention to deal with the objective order of this "real world" is crucial. If our assertoric commitments did not transcend the information we ourselves have on hand, we would never be able to "get in touch" with others about a shared objective world. No claim is made for the primacy of our conceptions, or for the correctness of our conceptions, or even for the mere agreement of our conceptions with those of others. The fundamental intention to discuss "the thing itself" predominates and overrides any mere dealing with the thing as we ourselves conceive of it. […] The information that we may have about a thing—be it real or presumptive information—is always just that, viz. information that we lay claim to. We cannot but recognize that it is person-relative and in general persondifferentiated. Our attempts at communication and inquiry are thus undergirded by an information-transcending stance—the stance that we communally inhabit a shared world of objectively existing things—a world of "real things" amongst which we live and into which we inquire but about which we do and must presume ourselves to have only imperfect information at any and every particular stage of the cognitive venture. This is not something we learn. The "facts of experience" can never reveal it to us. It is something we postulate or presuppose. Its epistemic status is not that of an empirical discovery, but that of a presupposition that is a product of a transcendental argument for the very possibility of communication or inquiry as we standardly conceive of them.” (PP93 and 94-95)

49 canvass it in overt detail. There are always bound to be more facts than we are able to capture in our linguistic terminology. There is always more to be said than the propositions of any particular set—or indeed of any particular language—enable us to say. (NU28, cf. PP99) Experience undoubtedly discloses such a cognitive opacity of concrete processes (i.e., an opacity of concrete processes to our cognition—cf. PM 131-132). Although we have no other consistent possibility than relying only upon their assumed transparency to the mind if we are to speculate about reality, Rescher heuristically injects in his argument a significant pragmatic substance, i.e., he adopts a truly eventful spirit. To activate this synergy between a cognitive idealism and a provisional realism, our author uses a typical blend of American processual pragmatism that finds its foundations in evolutionary epistemology. Probing these foundations should thus throw some significant light on this philosopher’s worldview and especially help us to assess his transhistorical standpoint. 4.2. Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), founded, in his 1855 Principles of Psychology (four years before Darwin’s Origin of Species) the classical “biological theory of knowledge”12 with a dazzling claim: the structure of human intellect is “a priori for an individual” but “a posteriori for the whole species.” Kant is sanctified on a new—empirical—basis. His core argument is fairly simple: the original function of knowledge is purely utilitarian because our mental apparatus is the product of the struggle for life, i.e., of our continual adjustment to the sector of reality important for survival purposes. Since our cognitive functions are of empirical origin, they can have only limited applicability. In illo tempore there was not— but now is—an (eternally) changeless apriori structure of human intelligence. It goes without saying that utilitarianism means here limited

12

On the development of “evolutionary epistemology”, see Donald T. Campbell’s “Evolutionary Epistemology” (in Paul Arthur Schlipp (ed.), The Philosophy of Karl Popper, La Salle, Illinois, The Open Court Publishing Company, The Library of Living Philosophers, XIV, 1974, pp. 413-451) and especially Milic Čapek’s very suggestive works: e.g., “La théorie biologique de la connaissance chez Bergson et sa signification actuelle”, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 44, 1959, pp. 194211; Bergson and Modern Physics. A Reinterpretation and Re-evaluation, Dordrecht and Boston, D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1971; and New Aspects of Time. Its Continuity and Novelties. Selected Papers in the Philosophy of Science, Dordrecht-Boston-London, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991. He refers himself to Spencer’s Part II, ch. XIV, pp. 195 and 428-430.

50 but real applicability. Some form of necessity seals the relativity of our categories. According to Spencer, but also to Herman von Helmoltz (1821– 1894), Hippolyte Taine (1828–1893), Ernst Mach (1838–1916), Alfred Fouillée (1838–1912), Théodule Ribot (1839–1916) (who translated Spencer’s Principles in French), Richard Avenarius (1843–1896), and Henri Poincaré (1854–1912), that evolutionary attunement is complete, simply because classical science provides the final truth (this position has been called Kantian “epistemological optimism”; Quine’s and Popper’s cases would need further specification). As Čapek wittingly says, adaptation actually culminates in the mind of a positivist philosopher of the XIXth century13. With the collapse of the classical worldview in the early XXth century, the “biological theory of knowledge” got more radical: it argues that there cannot be a final and definitive picture of the Totality. Our sensory and cognitive apparatus are not settled, full stop. The three early actors are William James (who already criticizes Spencer in 1878)14, Charles Sanders Peirce (“in short, Spencer is not a philosophical evolutionist, but only a half-evolutionist—or, if you wish, only a semiSpencerian. Now philosophy requires thoroughgoing evolutionism or none”15) and Henri Bergson, who severely condemns Spencerian “false evolutionism”16 as well. In sum: considering that, on the one hand, evolution is incomplete; and that, on the other hand, the faculty of understanding is nothing but the appendage of the faculty of acting, theories of life and theories of knowledge become inseparable in their evolutive fluctuations. Two further actors deserve a mention: Hans Reichenbach (1891– 1953), who has undoubtedly had a direct influence on Rescher’s thought, and the unavoidable Jean Piaget (1896–1980). Reichenbach (as early as his 13

Milič Čapek, New Aspects of Time, op. cit., p. 112.

14

See Čapek’s “Remarks on Spencer’s Definition of Mind as Correspondance”, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, IX, pp. 1-18. Ferdinand Canning Scot Schiller’s (1864–1937) Riddles of the Sphinx. A Study in the Philosophy of Evolution (1891) deserves a mention as well.

15

Charles Sanders Peirce, “The Architecture of Theories”, The Monist, January 1891, pp. 161-176; reprinted in Values in a Universe of Chance. Selected Writings of Charles S. Peirce. Edited, with an Introduction and Notes by Philip P. Wiener, Garden City, New York, Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958, here p. 148.

16

See L’Évolution créatrice, 1907, ch. IV.

51 1920 Relativitätstheorie und Erkenntnis Apriori)17 modified the Kantian apriorism: the evolutionary process of adjustment of the cognitive forms to the general structure of reality is only partial: it is (somewhat) adequate only to the mesocosmos, the world of middle dimensions (a puzzle that Bohr and Heisenberg underlined heavily in their well-known debate with Einstein on the ontological status of Quantum Mechanics). Piaget’s studies of the flexibility of the structure of the human mind would lead us too far, as would raising questions about Whitehead's curious silence on the matter.18 In conclusion, the cognitive functions of the human mind are not static operators at all, they are the transient phylogenetical result of a long adaptive process. Under the pressure of environmental adjustment (better knowledge allows a better chance for survival), intellect has become a master in the logic of solid bodies (linear causality, Euclidean geometry, etc.). But this is just an evolutionary adjustment to a limited—perceived— segment of a throbbing and coalescing world. This narrow scope is defined by the possibility of action in the context of natural selection. Knowledge is purely practical, utilitarian: the rationality that works in everyday life, i.e., that is applicable within our practical scope, is reasonable. Now, the evolutionary success of the “Homo approximatus”19 also lies in the fortunate oversimplifications the species has achieved through cultural endeavours: evolution in biosphere and education in ethosphere are intertwined in individuals.20 Koinogenesis,21 as one could call it, is the

17

Cf. Milič Čapek, “The Development of Reichenbach’s Epistemology”, The Review of Metaphysics 11, 1957, pp. 42-67 (reprinted in his New Aspects of Time, op. cit., pp. 103-128).

18

George Ramsdell Lucas, Jr. (in The Rehabilitation of Whitehead. An Analytic and Historical Assesment of Process Philosophy, Albany, New York, State University of New York Press, 1989) underlines that Whitehead does not seriously discuss evolutionary theories. But this does not mean that he rejects the principle of natural evolution—an idea widely discussed since Jean-Baptiste de Monet de Lamarck (1744–1829)—or that the opening of the possibles that it manifests so boldly is not for him of the utmost importance. A perusal of Science and the Modern World shows this inevitably.

19

David Galin, “The Concept “Self” and “person” in Buddhism and in Western Psychology”, in B. Alan Wallace (ed.), Meeting at the Roots. Essays on Tibetan Buddhism and the Natural Sciences, New York, Columbia University Press, 2001.

20

On these two poles, see Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s still stimulating discussion of, respectively, Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941) and Jakob Johann von Uexküll

52 process of convergence of individual consciousnesses through learning. It is a process of integrative synchronic tuning that can be contrasted with schismogenesis22—or progressive (pathological) differentiation. Learning does not simply mean here the institutionalised educational processes from child-rearing to post-graduate studies but, more comprehensively, all the forms of communication that exploit reinforcement loops to socially healthy (“tuned-in”) individuals, i.e., all the skills of navigation in society and in the world that are “broadcasted.” Rescher beautifully summarises this issue in PM 99-100 when he shows that, whereas natural evolution is Darwinian (random mutations naturally selected), cultural evolution is Teilhardian (purposeful mutations rationally selected). There is most definitely fitness—no matchness—of our cognitive tools to reality, from the biological and the cultural standpoints alike. It has to be furthermore kept in mind that no bifurcation obtains between the two realms—only a difference of degree. Rescher has here a serious proposal to accommodate the Kantian intuition of the organisational/constructive power of subjectivity with the Bergsonian intuition of the scattering propensity of reason confronted with the opacity of the concrete. PM insists indeed on the virtues of the “symbiotic cooperation” of pragmatism and rational processism. Pragmatically minded thinkers have focused upon the requisites for effective action: “If you want to act effectively, then you must accept something.” Rescher’s cognitively oriented pragmatism rather focuses upon the requisites for rational inquiry: “If you want to enter into the cognitive enterprise, that is, if you wish to be in a position to secure information about the world and to achieve a cognitive orientation within it, then you must be prepared to accept something.” (ID29-30) 4.3. This point being clarified, let us go back again to our first historical puzzle (does Rescher provide real transhistorical categories?). There is indeed a major inflection that needs to be addressed: the conceptual revolution that Alexandre Koyré (1882–1964) masterfully pictured as the move from a closed world to an open universe.

(1864–1944) in “An Essay on the Relativity of Categories”, Philosophy of Science, Vol. 22, N°4, 1955, pp. 243-263. 21

From koinos [koino/j], meaning “common”, “public”.

22

Needless to say that we borrow Gregory Bateson’s term: cf., e.g., “Culture Contact and Schismogenesis”, Man XXXV, 1935, pp. 178-183, reprinted in Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology. Preface by Mark Engel, San Francisco, Chandler, 1972, pp. 61-72).

53 Greek philosophy emerged in a cultural context that understood the world (and the City) as a cosmos [ko/smoj]. Three main concepts are expedient to picture this “mundus universus”: logos [lo/goj], arche [a)rxh/] and theoria [qewri/a]. To live in a cosmos (a fundamentally ordered world; where stability is the built-in feature) means three things: (i) there is a set of rational laws that structure the cosmos, and these laws structure as well the human mind (one matches the other, there is a rational transparency—and this paves the way to the understanding of truth as adequation); (ii) whence, the quest for the principle (or starting point, the “place” of genesis of all phenomena, the “source” of all manifestation) is a meaningful endeavour; (iii) that quest has furthermore a holistic transformative virtue (it is through theoretical reason that meaning is personally encountered and hence that one’s destiny can be bent). Specularly, XXth century process pragmatism understands the world as chaosmos.23 The three main relevant concepts are: nonrationality, antifoundation and consequentialism. To live in a chaosmos (a partially ordered world; where stability is earned over creative process, where stability never has the last word) means: (i) natural laws are but processual habits, they cannot pretend to exhaust the phenomena, and their fitness with human rationality is purely local, indeed pragmatic (as a result of this cognitive opacity, truth is instrumental; it grows “in spots” with our knowledge of the world); (ii) whence the quest of the principle is at best useless and at worst misleading; (iii) and solely consequences are thinkable (weaker version of the Greek theoretical wager). Historically speaking, many steps were needed to go from the Greek given Cosmos, to the Medieval created World and later to the PostDarwinian creative Universe. Greek geo-anthropo-centrism went hand in hand with a cosmos understood as an organic whole, an intelligent Being, i.e., a well-structured (differentiated) totality where the laws of the supralunar cannot be the ones of the Coming-To-Be and Passing-Away.

23

“Chaosmos” is of course Joyce’s Finnegans Wake conceptual creation. Orbiter scriptum, it is remarkable that Joyce has been influenced by Giordano Bruno (see our argument infra), who he claims is more the father of modern philosophy than Bacon or Descartes. The concept of chaosmos has been particularly popularized by Deleuze and Guattari (cf. Gilles Deleuze, Différence et répétition, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1968, pp. 80, 252, 257; Gilles Deleuze, Logique du sens, Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1969, p. 206; Gilles Deleuze, Le Pli. Leibniz et le baroque, Paris, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1988, p. 111; cf. also Félix Guattari, Chaosmose, Paris, Éditions Galilée, 1992).

54 Modern helio-cosmo-centrism institutes an infinite mechanical universe, a lifeless machine carved by an intelligent creator without, strictly speaking, a hierarchy of natural laws. Remains the fact, almost highlighted by Husserl in his Die Urarche Erde bewegt sich nicht (1934), that the oldfashioned cosmos can be interpreted as a mesonic approximation of the chaosmos. The two towering figures of this revolution are Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) and Charles Darwin (1809–1882). According to Koyré24, Bruno, in his Cena (1584), was the one who has broken the “Parmenidian sphere” with his concept of the infinite. Two complementary reforms are distinguishable: the destruction of the cosmos (i.e. the opening of the world) and the geometrization of space (i.e. its homogenisation: the same components are ruled by the same laws). Coming after Malthus, Adam Smith, Cuvier, Lamarck and Spencer, Darwin’s epoch-making The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859) established the foundations of a totally new paradigm granting the spontaneous springing up of new forms and their piloting by natural selection. This emergentism has had immense cultural consequences, as our discussion of evolutionary epistemology has already adumbrated. Having said this, three further factors deserve to be mentioned. First of all, the Christian dogma very early seals the historicity of the world with two complementary concepts: the creation of the world (ex nihilo or not) and the incarnation of Christ. But, paradoxically, the world stays closed and stable; history goes right through the world, a world that is nothing but the pure receptacle of the economy of redemption. Second, Hume has denounced, as early as 1739, the principle of the uniformity of nature25. However, Kant promptly defused Hume’s subversive potential, opening the door to the triumph of Newtonian mechanicism. Third, the foundation by Carnot (1824) and Clausius (1850) of thermodynamics has to be

24

Alexandre Koyré, Études galiléennes (trois volumes), Paris, Hermann, 1939-1940; Alexandre Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1957. A more exhaustive analysis should of course introduce three other major actors in the opening of the World: Columbus (1451–1506), Copernicus (1473–1543) and the 17th century Dutch Republic’s free market. See John Hope-Mason, The Value of Creativity. The Origins and Emergence of a Modern Belief, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003.

25

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects, 1739.

55 mentioned—but it is solely with Prigogine, it seems, that its global implications were thought for themselves26. In any event, the Whiteheadian key that we cautiously propose to throw light on that shift in worldview is the following. According to Greek philosopher-scientists, change exhausts itself in (can be understood only by) kinesis and morphogenesis; hylogenesis is properly unthinkable. In other words, the coming to be of new mundane items is understood as the birth of “new” forms, not of new matter simply because the cosmos is “closed.” According to Whitehead's processism, change is foremost— better: only—hylogenesis: “nature is never complete,” “it is always passing beyond itself”27. More precisely, we want to suggest how the British philosopher transcends the binomial hyle/morphe with a strong processual ontology adequate to the “open” chaosmos. It is a cautious proposal because it should be remembered that “most of the muddles of philosophy are […] due to using a language which is developed from one point of view to express a doctrine based upon entirely alien concepts.”28 To put things simply and in Aristotelian terms, change [metabolh/] was conceptualised in Greece either as movement or as generation/corruption [ge/nesij kai\ fqora/].29 On the one hand, movement (i.e., the change of position in space, quantitative change or qualitative change) presupposed the essential continuity of the mobile as subjectum. On the other, generation/corruption, the most fundamental mode of change, was understood only—and this is striking—as

26

Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, La nouvelle alliance. Métamorphose de la science, Paris, Gallimard, 1979 (Tr. as Order out of Chaos. Man's New Dialogue with Nature. Foreword by Alvin Toffler, London, Hermann, 1984).

27

Process and Reality, p. 289.

28

Symposium in Honor of the Seventieth Birthday of A. N. Whitehead, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1932, p. 27 (reprinted in The Interpretation of Science. Selected Essays. Edited, with an Introduction, by A. H. Johnson, Indianapolis / New York, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., The Library of Liberal Arts, N° 117, 1961, p. 218).

29

The difficulty of the argument lies of course in the necessity of giving conceptual tags to name the general Greek state of mind. Besides, Aristotle is not that clear in the usage he makes of his own categories. Change is either generation/corruption or one of the forms of kinesis: ki/nesij names quantity changes (auxh/sij kai\ fqi/sij), quality changes (a)lloi/wsij) and locomotion (fora/). But he makes clear that a subject always persists amid changes.

56 morphogenesis, i.e., as continuous genesis of new forms from old ones. In other words, this trans-formation or meta-morphosis could not allow the irruption in the world of totally new features. The reason for this is quite simple: change occurs within a cosmos, a pre-given ordered Totality. No cosmic growth is thinkable. If we have a look at the other end of the speculative spectrum, we find Whitehead’s organicism, which argues for a reformed hylogenesis. Actually, to claim that Whitehead understands change—kinetic or morphogenetic—as hylogenetic is not radical enough since substantialistic hylemorphism is completely dismissed. When Whitehead claims that the Aristotelian notion of the “procession of forms” has to be replaced by the notion of the “forms of process,” he makes it clear that hylemorphism has to go.30 There is no more movement, morphogenesis or hylogenesis,31 solely a never-ending creative re-creation of the World. Whitehead does not speak anymore of a continuous change taking place within the World, but of a discontinuous change of the World, of the birth of a new event in the World, which is thereby transformed. Technically speaking, a spatiotemporal trajectory is now the abstraction of an hypertrajectory in the extensive continuum.32 In Greece everything changes and nothing becomes; with Whitehead, everything becomes and nothing changes.

30

Modes of Thought, p. 140.

31

Process and Reality, pp. 73, 35, 68, 79.

32

The status of the extensive continuum is shaped in Process and Reality Part IV. It is essential to differentiate the extensive continuum and the extensive connection. The relation of extensive connection, operating between regions (while the “extensive abstraction” of his earlier works was operational among a continuum of events), spells how extension is both required by the processes of concrescence and of transition, and derivative from them. It is, so to speak, both ex ante and ex post. Extension is required in so far as extensive connection provides a general type of relatedness that secures the possibility of the solidarity between past, present and future actual entities, i.e., in so far as it expresses the solidarity of all possible standpoints. For instance, the concrescence presupposes its basic region. This ultimate relationship is “sui generis, and cannot be defined or explained. But its formal properties can be stated. […] Some of the simpler characteristics of extensive connection, as here stated, are probably such ultimate metaphysical necessities.” (Process and Reality, p. 288) These characteristics lead straight to a contiguist worldview. One has to insist as well on the difference existing between extension, as it is defined here (very few properties, no metrics), and the commonsensical, or even scientific, notions of spatial and temporal extension, that are a contingent by-product belonging to our cosmic epoch. (Cf. the multiple space-time

57 As a result, one has to wonder if, by definition, when Heraclitus processualized his cosmos, did he not do so only partially in the sense that he is concerned only with kinetic and morphogenetic processes? Of course, one could maintain that Zeno’s paradoxes, Plato’s exaiphnes [e)cai/fnhj] and the Leibnizian fulguratio33 testify to Greek and Medieval prescience of the aporia that is a closed world. A world in which solely kinetic and morphogenetic changes systematise flux is absurd (epistemologically as well as existentially). But, as we will see, one had to wait for Whitehead to show the power of the concept of percolation for understanding becoming. We choose to speak of percolation basically in order (i) to suggest the synergy that is often missed between Whitehead’s concepts of concrescence and transition and (ii) to highlight that the innovatory process occurs at the edges of the World/God contiguum. The last question we have to raise is thus whether Whitehead's argument for the ontological percolation of novelty—his “epochal theory of time”34—is compatible with Rescher’s “generic and potentially diffuse doctrinal tendency” (PM 44-45 quoted supra). More precisely, the problem is the following: on the one hand, Whitehead’s argument pretends to offer systems introduced by An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge.) Extension is derivative in so far as it manifests the actual interconnection in the extensive continuum. The ex post occupied (or proper) region corresponds to the ex ante “basic region”. 33

See esp. Lorenz’ speculations: “When one attemps to describe the great process of organic growth, one finds oneself hampered by the fact that the language of culture was born at a time when ontogeny, i.e., the evolution of the individual creature, was the only form of development known. Words like development and evolution have the etymological connotation of the unfolding of something that was already there in a compressed or confined form, like the flower in the bud, or the chicken in the egg. For ontogenic processes of this kind such words are perfectly suitable. But they are lamentably inadequate when one attempts to define the nature of an organic creative process through which something entirely new comes into existence, something that was simply not there before. Theistic philosophers and mystics of the Middle Ages coined the term fulguratio, "flash of lightning", to denote the act of creation, thereby conveying the notion of a sudden intervention from above, from God.” (Konrad Zacharias Lorenz, Behind the mirror: a search for a natural history of human knowledge. Transl. by Ronald Taylor [Die Rückseite des Spiegels. Versuch einer Naturgeschichte menschlichen Erkennens, MunichZürich, Piper, 1973], London, Methuen & Co., 1977, p. 29.)

34

Cf. Process and Reality, pp. 68, 106, 125, 256, 280, 283 (although Whitehead toys with the proximity between the epochal theory and the cosmic epoch—the former being the “original sense” of the later—, they are distinct).

58 the ultimate categorialization of the conditions of chaosmic possibility; on the other hand, Rescher’s transhistorical claims make the epochal theory redundant. 5. Continuism and Contiguism According to Rescher, processes, microprocesses, macroprocesses, megaprocesses, structured manifolds of processes and the like are fully able to picture adequately the chaosmic architecture and its constant amendments. From the perspective of the interpretation of the history of process thought developed in the last section, one has to ask if this thesis is not actually another guise of trans-formation or meta-morphosis. All the more so since a significant number of philosophers who have seriously meditated on the ontological conditions of possibility of the coming-intoexistence of new actualities have also reached the conclusion that some form of “all at once” eventfulness needs to be involved: consider, e.g., Parmenides’ Way of Truth, Zeno’s paradoxes, Plato’s “exphaines,” Suarez’ meditations on creation and their impact on Descartes continuous creation35, Leibniz’s monadological centres of force, James’ bud-like experiences, Weiss’ gulps36, or Peirce—the very one who argues for synechism, as PM 55 reminds us (cf. also PM 14 and PP31)—: “It is only actuality, the force of existence, which bursts the fluidity of the general and produces a discrete unit.”37 In Whitehead’s case, atomicity is a condition of 35

Gilson’s mediation has been crucial for Whitehead’s awareness of these problems. Process and Reality (xiii) refers to Étienne Gilson, Études sur le rôle de la pensée médiévale dans la formation du système cartésien, Paris, Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1930 (cf. Jean-Claude Dumoncel, “Ontologie des notions nomades: Whitehead et le problème primordial de la métaphysique”, in Pierre Rodrigo (ed.), [Whitehead] Les Études philosophiques, fascicule n° 4, Paris, 2002, pp. 457 sq.) See also Jean-Luc Marion, Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes. Analogie, création des vérités éternelles et fondement, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1981.

36

“With James and Whitehead we must conclude that time comes in gulps and that what is, actually endures for an extensive instant.” (Paul Weiss, Reality, Princeton, N. J., Princeton University Press, 1938, p. 233.)

37

Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers, Edited by Charles S. Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1932, IV, §172. Interestingly enough, Kuhn (who got introduced to Whitehead by James Conant) adopts a similar language to speak of the transition between incommensurable competing paradigms: “like the gestalt switch, [the transition] must occur all at

59 possibility of the occurrence of novelty: without it, no understanding of the actualization of pattern-breaking is possible. But “atomicity” is not the best concept to name the percolation Whitehead describes. Strictly speaking, atomicity is what Whitehead denounces with his dismissal of “simply located” matter. And this brings us back to Rescher’s (mis)understanding of the philosopher. 5.1. Rescher’s standpoint seems pretty straightforward: Whiteheadian ontology makes, volens nolens, unhappy concessions to the classical atomism of Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus and Dalton—which no doubt represents nothing less than the paradigmatic form of substantialism (PM 34, 89, 98). Let us peruse the details. The basic idea of the process philosophy of nature, claims Rescher, is to view the world as a unified macro-process that consists of a myriad of duly coordinated subordinate micro-processes. A clear contrast-case to such a process view of the real is afforded by classical atomism based on the Democritean conception of atoms and the void. While the reciprocal relationship of such items— atoms and the void—is supposed to give rise to motion (and so to processes), these fundamental resources themselves are unprocessual items that stand entirely outside the order of process, seeing that, as classically conceived, they themselves are wholly impervious to change. By contrast, a physics based exclusively on fields and forces that operate on their own, without any embedding in substantial things of some sort, is the quintessence of a process philosophy of nature. These items— fields and distributions of force—allow processual change to occur “all the way through,” so to speak. (PM 84)38 Please notice the recurrence of the kinematic concepts put into perspective by the last section and the importance of the field theory. Again: The only change which such atoms admit is one of their relative spatial distribution in relation to one another—so that every sort of natural process is, in the final analysis, reducible to once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all”. (Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Second edition, enlarged, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1970, pp. 85, 150; cf. p. 122). 38

Cf. also PP11: “A classical atomism whose ontology consists only of atoms and the void is the ultimate contrary to a process philosophy. A physics of fields and forces that operate on their own, without an embedding in things, is the quintessence of a process philosophy of nature.”

60 the activities (i.e., the movements) of substances (atoms). The only sort of process in the world is thus one of the motion of atoms—their change of position. And all other changes are reducible to this—to the reshuffling of the positions of otherwise unchanging atoms in their placement relationships to one another within the vast spatial matrix that embraces them all alike (the “void”). And since the rearrangement of atoms is all there is, the world's overall condition is at bottom always uniformly the same. Progress, advance, development—in short teleology in all its forms—have no place in nature's scheme of things. (PM 34, cf. 84) As a result: No ontological doctrine could be more emphatic regarding the ontological primacy of stable substances than Greek atomism which, for this very reason is the quintessence of everything to which process philosophy is opposed. (PM 34) But the atomism here denounced is the very one Whitehead's “fallacy of simple location” attacks. Actually, both authors are here in agreement. Before showing this, let us follow Rescher’s train of thought that now addresses directly Whitehead's core ontological categories: Whitehead's approach in process philosophy was somewhat flawed. For Whitehead insisted upon irreducibly atomic units of process—”actual occasions”—themselves altogether indecomposible and serving as basic units or building blocks out of which all larger processes are then constituted. This process atomism is certainly a theoretical possibility. But it is also a dubious proposition—and one that is rather at odds with the spirit of process philosophy. Why, after all, should process be seen as in discretized units? Whitehead's theory of processes as rooted in the aggregation of atomistic “actual occasions”—is an unhappy concession to a thoroughly process-estranged point of view. Why should the succession of subordinate processes inevitably have to come to an end: It is far more appropriate to contemplate a Chinese box-like succession of larger processes enhancing over small ones. The poet's situation of larger fleas having ever smaller ones to bite 'em—ad infinitium. After all, if nature is indeed processual, then why should not its composition be processual “all the way through”? Why should there be ultimate particles of process that are exempt from the process of aggregation we find

61 everywhere else. From the process point of view it is, surely, only natural to see nature as a manifold of concatenated processes that admit—in principle—of decomposition into ever smaller processual units—a pervasively structured manifold of micro- and macro-process whose intricacy is unlimited and does not come to an end in a rock bottom of some sort that is itself exempt form the process of decomposition that we find at work everywhere else. (PM 89-90) As far as we know, and this is rather crucial, “building blocks” and “aggregates” are not expressions present in Whitehead's works.39 Anyway, Rescher furthermore uses the complementary example of the category of “nexus”: A nexus represents “a particular fact of togetherness among actual entities,” and reflects the fact that such entities make up organized groups or societies. But in a way this is a needless complication, forced on Whitehead by his commitment to process atomism of ultimately undissolvable processual units. Once this atomistic doctrine is abandoned, the matter becomes simplicity itself. (PM 55; cf. PP31)40 He thus concludes: As Whitehead's own reaction shows, the rise of the quantum theory put money in process philosopher's bank account. […] The demise of classical atomism brought on by the dematerialization of physical matter in the wake of the quantum theory did much to bring aid and comfort to a process-oriented metaphysics. […] Twentieth century physics has thus turned the tables on classical atomism. Instead of very small things (atoms) combining to produce standard processes (windstorms and such), modern physics envisions very small processes (quantum phenomena)

39

Process and Reality, pp. 173 and 286 are two minor exceptions to this rule.

40

Rescher continues by quoting Peirce’s Collected Papers, Vol. 6, sections 6.169 and 170: “A more satisfactory approach is that reflected in the doctrine of "synechism" introduced under this name by C.S. Peirce, who defined it as "that tendency of philosophical thought which insists upon the idea of continuity as of prime importance in philosophy," with particular stress on the idea that "a true continuum is something whose possibilities of determination no multitude of individuals can exhaust."”

62 combining in their modus operandi to produce standard things (ordinary macro-objects). (PM 97-98) This is indeed a very good place to start our discussion. 5.2. Whitehead's key idea in this context is the necessary reform of the concept of simple location of instantaneous material configurations, a major instance of his “fallacy of misplaced concreteness” (i.e., to mistake an abstraction for a concrete fact). The simply located substance is the root presupposition of the modern scientific worldview: matter, or material, is anything which has the property of simple location—i.e., which has environmental and temporal independence. In other words, scientific materialism defines a corpuscle (or a body) independently of its environment and independently of the flow of time. Existence is necessarily purely local, self-sufficient, instantaneous; more precisely: only external relations are operative.41 But, claims Whitehead, simple location is just a very successful mesocosmic abstraction, the very abstraction that allowed the triumph of scientific materialism. Science itself asks now for a complex location, i.e., for an eventful matter dependent on its environment and in perpetual flux.42 Internal relations are also required. On the one hand, space should 41

Simple location is defined in Science and the Modern World’s chapter III with the help of the distinction between a major and a minor characteristic.

42

Besides M. Faraday (1791–1867), W. Thomson (1824–1907) and P. G. Tait (1831– 1901), J. C. Maxwell (1831–1879) is the major catalyst with his polished concept of the field. Of course, this debate belongs as well to the reformation of the status of the substance/attribute scheme and of the subject/predicate propositonal pattern spelled out by Russell after Frege (monadic relations are not primary; they are the limit case of polyadic—many-termed—relations). Whitehead does not seem to have had a direct responsibility in that reform. But this does not mean that the ascription of ontological primacy to polyadic relations does not have a long personal historical background that goes back to his Treatise on Universal Algebra (1898). “On Mathematical Concepts of the Material World” (1906) offers the crucial inflection between the Euclidean notion of a point, still operational in the Universal Algebra, and the complex relational notion necessitated by the laws of physics of the time. The consequences are twofold: negatively, space cannot be conceived anymore as an inert container, an absolute space made of extensionless points is inconsistent with the mundane eventfulness (and metrics are inessential); positively, space is relational and therefore supportive of time and of action at a distance (this follows from the definition of a point as what remains of an object when all properties but position are abstracted). His early writings culminate with “La théorie relationiste de l’espace” (1916), which shows how much theoretical physics has always been the horizon of meaning of all the researches of

63 be conceived as a relational web abstracted from the events themselves (remember the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence). “In a certain sense, everything is everywhere at all times. […] Every spatio-temporal standpoint mirrors the world.”43 On the other hand, time is not a “pure succession” of individually independent facts: there is nothing which “simply happens.” On the contrary, “pure succession of time is merely an abstract from the fundamental relationship of conformation.”44 Time is growth (there is repetition of past events and overcoming of these settled events45) and growth takes time (“at an instant there is nothing”46). There is nothing, it seems, that Rescher could not accept here. Science and the Modern World argues with the help of the concept of prehension: “There is a prehension, here in this place, of things which have a reference to other places.”47 His idea is a simple as this: past, settled events (“stubborn facts”), located more or less remotely, are prehended, presentified, made immediate, here by contemporary events. Technically speaking, the prehensive unity is respectful of the settled past because of the vector character of prehensions themselves: the non-reflexivity, asymmetricality and transitivity of prehensive relationships guarantees that

Whitehead’s first period. The goal was to recarve the status of space and geometry, now immersed in a Maxwellian atmosphere, through a purely logical analysis (neither physical nor philosophical). Maxwell’s struggle with classical mechanics while building the electromagnetic field theory announced indeed the crisis of materialism—and this is exactly what Whitehead understood to be the crucial theoretical challenge. For the Russellian side of this speculative renewal, see e.g. Julius R. Weinberg, Ockham, Descartes, and Hume: Self-Knowledge, Substance, and Causality, Madison (Wis.), University of Wisconsin Press, 1977; for its Whiteheadian side, there is a recent straightforward work by Luca Gaeta (who is deeply influenced by Paci): Segni del cosmo. Logica e geometrica in Whitehead, Milano, LED—Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economica Diritto, Il Filarete: Pubblicazioni della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’ Universita degli Studi di Milano CCX, 2002. 43

Science and the Modern World, p. 91.

44

Symbolism, pp. 38-39.

45

Process and Reality, p. 137 (“Cf. Science and the Modern World, Ch. III.”).

46

Modes of Thought, p. 146; cf. Concept of Nature, p. 61. Compare with Essays in Science and Philosophy, p. 241.

47

Science and the Modern World, p. 69.

64 they provide the gearing between external and internal relations.48 We will go back to this in a moment. When Whitehead speaks of an “atomic theory of actuality” (Process and Reality, passim) or claims that “the ultimate metaphysical truth is atomism (Process and Reality, 35-36) he is thus not building a new classical atomism. Of course, he could have been clearer in the exposition of his worldview, more careful in the use of the concepts he borrows from his peers and in the creation of his own categories. For instance, his concepts of “mental pole” and “physical pole,” interpreted point-black, are totally misleading. It could be argued, however, that his philosophical style was facilitated, if not necessitated, by his standpoint (especially by his radical empiricism and his non-dogmatism); we have room only to unfold the meaning and significance of his atomism as straightforwardly as possible. We need to show first why atomism as percolation is required; and second how it is meshed with continuism. The conclusion that imposes itself is the following: Whitehead actually argues for a contiguism establishing a strong synergy between discontinuous and continuous features of actuality. 5.3. The question Process and Reality treats concerns the ontological conditions of possibility of a truly open universe: how can genuine novelty occur? Its answer is ontological atomicity—more precisely: ontological percolation. Whitehead is reinterpreting Zeno49 in the light of his knowledge of Plato, Descartes, Leibniz and James, and together with his acute awareness of the recent advances of science. Three basic concepts are intertwined in his redefinition of subjectivity by experience, rather than consciousness: atomicity, duration and liberty. Atomicity means privacy, independence, prehensive internalisation: 48

Bertrand Russell provides a complementary analysis in his Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy (Delivered as Lowell Lectures in Boston, in March and April 1914], Chicago, The Open Court Publishing Co., 1914). It will be remembered that, according to Russell’s own Autobiography itself, his extensive use of Whitehead’s notes upset Whitehead so much that it put a factual end to their collaboration.

49

Science and the Modern World, 125sq. and 136. See PM 96: “all real time exhibits breadth and duration; it comes in intervals. Process philosophers incline to extend this view from biological and psychological ("lived experience") time to the time of physics as well. They insist that any process takes its time (however short); there are no punctiform, instantaneous processes. Regarding this as the salient lesson of Zeno's paradoxes, process philosophers count it as a central feature of their own position.”

65 unforeseeable pattern-breaking requires elbow room (some form of looseness or disconnectedness) in order to precipitate, and this can occur only all at once.50 Duration basically means extratemporality; it is correlated with the liberty dwelling in each and every happening. The temporal knot manifests indeed the yoke of efficient causation: physical time expresses the features of the growth, not the growth of the features.51 Exactly, liberty—or freedom—is frequently evoked in Whitehead’s corpus, either explicitly or through the use of the concepts of self-creation, self-causation, self-formation, self-identity, self-determination, vigorous self-assertion, causal independence, originality, origination, flash of autonomy, decision or spontaneity. It is the ultimate freedom of things, lying beyond all determinations,52 that asks for, and allows, ontological jumps that are after all, in most cases, nothing but flashes of spontaneity.53 As in Kant, liberty names the “acausal” capacity of breaking off, of beginning a totally new causal chain. The togetherness in the making—what is really real—is new because it does not simply repeat past events: there is necessarily an iota of freedom that operates a choice between what is initially given, i.e., between the mere potentialities Whitehead calls “stubborn facts.” And that choice is not simply a passive one among predetermined alternatives: highgrade actual occasions (or “actual entities”) have the power of creating some of the competing alternatives (they have access to “conceptual reversion”54). In this way, decision constitutes the very meaning of actuality. It occurs in the privacy of the emerging actuality, outside of

50

See “The Dilemma of Determinism” in The Will to Believe, And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897). Interestingly, PM (pp. 91, 159) refers itself as well to James’ “elbow room”.

51

Process and Reality, p. 283.

52

Process and Reality, p. 47.

53

Adventures of Ideas, p. 47.

54

As a matter of technical interest: the “abolition” of this category by Process and Reality itself is either a slip of the pen or, more likely, the unfortunate consequence of the dialogue the work exploits between the category of reversion and the principle of Hume. Abolished or not, reversion is used throughout the opus magnum to account for the apparition of novelty in the World. We should not read Process and Reality in the light of the abolition, but interpret the abolition in the light of the general atmosphere of the book, as it is created by its idiosyncratic philosophical style.

66 physical time. Creative freedom lies in the marrow of each event in the making. In other words, concrescence does not happen in the World, but at the edges of the World (the topological concept of adherence being analogically applicable). This is so because of the necessary privacy required by that process of growth: experience occurs by buds, all at once, totally or not at all. It cannot belong completely to the World, since the World is made of determined actualities, of actualities-object,55 ruled by efficient—deterministic—causation. This will bring us to the study of the objective or continuist feature of Whitehead’s ontology after a short remark. As a matter of fact, the British philosopher is here carving transgressive concepts (in the etymological sense exploited by Gœthe) and hence comes within the framework of the ancient quest for the principle. How can the origin be thought, both in itself and for the World? Strictly speaking, it cannot dwell into the World and, yet, it supports it. However, since the entire categorial context has changed (not to speak of the cultural one), Whitehead does belong to antifoundationalism. The double tension animating his speculations is the following: on the one hand, he dares to venture into the ontological territory in order to settle epistemological and logical problems (which means that he re-enacts the quest for the principle); but, on the other, he does so in an eventful spirit, as the repeated use of suspensive clauses to avoid any dogmatic slide amply testifies. There is no pure subjectivity for Whitehead. Actuality-subject does not exist without actualities-object, no event in the making without events made (the settled facts). Furthermore, not only does subjectivity springs out of objectivity, but it soon settles into objectivity as well. So far, we have only sketched the creative happening per se. Upstream, we find the

55

Actuality-subject and actuality-object (or occasions-suject and occasions-object) stand for “actuality-as-subject”, i.e., as experiencing, and “actuality-as-objects”, i.e., as (possibly) experienced. Whitehead’s own corresponding contrast is between “subject” and “superject”. Although our heuristic reconstruction of Whitehead’s ontology has been developped independently, parts of it factually overlap with some features of other authors’ interpretations. Let us pin down, on the one hand, George L. Kline, “Form, Concrescence and Concretum. A Neo-Whiteheadian Analysis”, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 7, 1969-1970, pp. 351-360 (revised and enlarged in Lewis S. Ford and George L. Kline (eds.), Explorations in Whitehead's Philosophy, New York, Forham University Press, 1983, pp. 104-146); and, on the other, Jorge Luis Nobo, Whitehead's Metaphysics of Extension and Solidarity, Albany, New York, State University of New York Press, 1986.

67 (past) objective world, and downstream the world consequent to the integration of the new actuality. When the actuality has concresced, it topples into objectivity and becomes itself available for further concrescences—this is called transition. In the same way subjectivity requires atomicity, duration and liberty (one could add teleology and “subjective immediacy”—or “enjoyment”—as well), objectivity requires continuity, physical time and determinism (with causal efficacy and without immediacy)—all features witnessed by common-sense experience. The actuality-object is an experienced (or at least experienceable) actuality, an actuality that is “something” determinate. Experience is what matters; it binds what is in process with what has been in process. Kant is thus somehow put upside-down—past actualities suscitate contemporary actualities, objectivity gives birth to subjectivity—but his constructivism remains, made even more radical.56 Novelty is germinating at the edges of the World (the bud-metaphor is completely appropriate here). When it enters the World, it is fully integrated within its existing structure and modifies it (to sketch the technicalities: the extensive continuum is both required by, and derivative from, concrescence; the basic region and the occupied region have to be distinguished). Since there can be no continuity of becoming, the continuum is built discontinuously: “there is a becoming of continuity, but no continuity of becoming.”57 The concept of contiguity is adequate to depict that complementarity. Although it occurs quite rarely in his corpus (Process and Reality, 132 sq., 307-308, 322), it is always very sharply used. There are many keys to the conceptualisation of contiguity in Process and Reality: the all-embracingness of the Ur-category of creativity and of its operationalization by the relation of extension; the extensive continuum itself, as we have just furtively seen; and the vectorial character of the prehensive relationship. The prehension of an occasion-object by an occasion-subject is asymmetrical: from the perspective of the object, it is external (non-constitutive); from the perspective of the subject, it is internal (constitutive). Difference is preserved, while repetition and novelty are allowed. In summary, subjectivity, i.e. existence or actuality per se, is articulated with objectivity, i.e., being or potentiality. The former is the locus of (free) final causation; the latter of (deterministic) efficient

56

Cf., e.g., Process and Reality, pp. 88 and 156.

57

Process and Reality, p. 35.

68 causation. The durational present (i.e., the existence outside physical time) of the free concrescing “actual occasion” is bound with the past experiences sheltered by the transitional actual entities. The brute fact that is the creative advance means that, (i) out of the many past occasions, a new occasion arise by “concrescence”; and further that (ii) once “satisfied,” that new occasion (or actuality-subject) is added to the wealth of the given (actualities-object). The many become one and are increased by one. The many become one through concrescence—and are increased by one through transition. When the actuality-subject is satisfied, it topples into objectivity—it is released into the World in solido—, and becomes available as material for further concrescences (i.e., it starts exerting causal efficacy). There are thus two ways of speaking of the “after” of a concrescence. To speak of “actuality-object” is to emphasize that it is the outcome of a concrescence; to speak of “actuality-superject” (as Process and Reality does) is to underline that it is itself at the root of further concrescences. Self-creation is followed by allo-creation which announces more self-creations… “The definition of being is simply power,” insists Whitehead after Plato.58 The zest of Whitehead's vision can be summarized very simply: it addresses the question of the conditions of possibility of a radical novelty and argues that novelty necessarily percolates into the World, i.e., that actual experience comes only in a bud-like manner, buttressed upon the continuity of the past events and contributing to that continuity. Ontological percolation embodies the crux of the matter because it provides a new sequentialization of the coming-to-be and passing-away of actualities. It describes how, at the edges of the World, the novel actualization occurs. Let us notice finally that percolation also felicitously names the filtration (Latin “per-colare”), the strain, of the past World by the concrescing, epochal, actuality. As a matter of interest, the concept of concrescence, introduced in Process and Reality and systematically treated only there, emphasizes the divine dependence of the mundane process of innovation through the bestowal of an “initial subjective aim”—whereas the concept of percolation highlights its borderline status. It should be obvious now how the philosopher completely reassess the kinetic-morphogenetic-substantialistic mode of thought. Concrescence is indeed justified by the “genetic analysis” while transition belongs to the “morphological analysis” of process (notice the correspondence with our

58

Plato, Sophist, 247 quoted by Adventures of Ideas, p. 120.

69 discussion of Greece).59 The former raises questions about the experience of the ultimate itself, the later could be said to be purely mundane, accessible through experiments. As a result, the synergy instituted between subjectivity and objectivity means that our two main cognitive modes— philosophy and science—are brought together again; there is no need to claim anymore that one has to supersede the other. Both the qualitativeness and the quantitativeness of our immediate experience are explicitly acknowledged. Cognition by concept and cognition by mathematical science are reconciled at last. 5.4. When Rescher claims that one can—or even should—dispense with Whiteheadian ontological atomicity, there is thus a slight misunderstanding on the meaning and significance of the epochal theory. But is such a state of affairs coincidental? “The philosophy of organism— says Whitehead—, which is an atomic theory of actuality, meets a perplexity which is inherent in all monadic cosmologies.”60 Rescher’s rejection of Whitehead’s reformed subjectivism and the nebulousness of the Rescherian idea of creativity61 find their expected consequence in the evacuation of ontological atomicity. Rescher’s attitude is not speculatively shy or even intrinsically minimalist (only for the sake of immediate clarity and the virtue of economy does he say: let us avoid the multiplication of “entities”): Whitehead’s question is simply not his, full stop. And here we meet the bottom line of any argument whatsoever: the decision where to start and where to stop the inquiry is a matter of personal taste. The philosopher has to learn, through the awareness of the presuppositions of his or her— possibly endless—quest, and through an acute grasp of the requirements of praxis, when—and at what price—to stop. So, for instance, the opacity of the concrete is a theme that is crucial in James, Whitehead and Rescher. James was, indeed, a radical empiricist: what mattered for him was direct,

59

“There are two distinct ways of “dividing” the satisfaction of an actual entity into component feelings, genetically and coordinately. Genetic division is division of the concrescence; coordinate division is division of the concrete. In the “genetic” mode, the prehensions are exhibited in their genetic relationship to each other. […] Physical time makes its appearance in the “coordinate” [or morphological] analysis of the “satisfaction.”” (Process and Reality, p. 283)

60

Process and Reality, p. 27.

61

The concept of creativity, because of its ultimateness, is quite problematic in the litterature. The burden of the discussion is carried in PM (on pp. 74 sq.) by the concepts of innovation and novelty, whose articulation is itself unclear.

70 ultimate experience of Nature’s brooding presence—and he never stopped trying to attain the most vivid “Anaesthetic Revelation” possible. There is no doubt that he aimed at pushing empiricism to the hilt; this was for him the Gist of Philosophy. The British philosopher had another temperament altogether: although his commitment to radical empiricism cannot be doubted, one has difficulties to imagine Whitehead exhilarated by some purposeful intoxication. He went speculatively as far as he could to preserve the meaning of all possible experiences and to systematically weave them all together. But he had to compensate for his lack of propensity for existential adventures by a mind-boggling imaginative power that could bring together the scattered parts of the jig-saw. So it is no surprise that imagination is highlighted right at the beginning of Process and Reality and haunts especially its Part I, where the business of philosophy is discussed. Among the “strong impressions” that dominated his mind when working on his Gifford Lectures, one finds the importance of a sustained effort of constructive thought to guide imagination, which basically means (i) the necessity of framing the best possible scheme of ideas and of unflinchingly explore the interpretation of experience in terms of that scheme and (ii) the need of sustaining an effort to make unacknowledged schemes explicit.62 In order to do so, descriptive generalization is to be complemented byimaginative generalization. If we now turn to Rescher, we find a thinker less eager to deal with extreme experiences—either existentially or imaginatively. Surely what matters are all experiences, including the fundamental experience of relationships, but the focal point of Rescher’s systematization effort remains on the transparency of the mind one can achieve in the normal state of consciousness. “Validation in metaphysics is not empirical (observational) but functional (presuppositional)—at any rate in the first instance.” (NU4 and passim—cf., e.g., NU112 quoted supra) It might be appropriate to recall in conclusion the following wellknown anecdote. Russell claimed that Whitehead became the serpent in his paradise of Mediterranean beauty when he said to him:

62

Process and Reality, xiv (“In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly”); cf. Process and Reality, 4: “Philosophers can never hope finally to formulate these metaphysical first principles. Weakness of insight and deficiencies of language stand in the way inexorably. Words and phrases must be stretched towards a generality foreign to their ordinary usage; and however such elements of language be stabilized as technicalities, they remain metaphors mutely appealing for an imaginative leap.”

71 “You think the world is what it looks like in fine weather at noon day ; I think it is what it seems like in the early morning when one first wakes from deep sleep.” I [Russell] thought this remark horrid, but could not see how to prove that my bias was any better than his.63 To appeal, as we just did, to the difference of temperament between thinkers might sound a bit loose. The fact that it occurs as a meta-criterion, e.g., in Nietzsche, Emerson, James, Whitehead, Cornford, Jung, but also in Russell and Poincaré, is of good omen but not enough: what is needed is a sharp analysis of a set of criteria of the type Process and Reality discloses in its Part I in order to realize that even such a tight set of criteria rarely help in discriminating ontological puzzles.64 It is indeed very likely that no 63

Bertrand Russell, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1956, p. 40.

64

Process and Reality uses five complementary criteria: two rational (consistency and coherence) and two empirical (applicability and adequacy), hold together by necessity. The criterion of necessity having an a priori and mediating character, it cannot be directly used for discriminative purposes. The best discrimination would undoubtedly be by mean of the lack of applicability of one of the opponents. Whatever the coherence and the consistency are, if concreteness is not reached in a satisfactory manner (and here also a consensual criterion is needed), the system has to be considered as falsified. One could use the ideal of adequacy, but with all the proper reserves. The next step would be consistency—if one considers that, above all, philosophical schemes ought to strictly follow logical rules—, or coherence—if one considers instead that some liberty can be taken with bare logic for the sake of applicability. To accept consistency as primordial requires a formal definition of the rules that will be discriminative. The non-contradiction requirement belongs without doubt to the good sense that Descartes found in everyone—the price to pay for that certitude being the concealment of the presuppositions of the principle of non-contradiction. With that regard, Whitehead remarks that “logics presupposes metaphysics;” one could go further with Apel and claim that logic presupposes a pratical-ethical standpoint as a condition of possibility. It is indeed known since Łukasiewicz that the different “proofs” of the principle of non-contradiction that punctuate the Book Gamma are either insufficient or circular. This correlation of the logical and the ethical has of course deeper roots, so much so that it would be perfectly appropriate to go back to the Socratic message, as briefly indicated by Arendt; or to relativize the importance of non-contradiction in metaphysics—a path adopted by Whitehead. To accept coherence leads to a more subtle onto-logical perspective. This is the stance taken by Whitehead, but also Nicholas of Cusa, or Hegel […] Logical contradiction, lethal in the case of a deductive system, is not too much of a problem in a speculative atmosphere: a logical mistake should only lead to internal adjustments. Consistency is thus a necessary but not a sufficient

72 neutral discriminative algorithm will ever be defined because the successful communities that lay down the law are themselves impermanent. Such an analysis cannot be undertaken here.

condition of the viability of a categoreal scheme. “Logic, properly used, does not shackle thought. It gives freedom, and above all, boldness.” (AE118) On the contrary, a deficient coherence leads inevitably to the collapse of the system—or to its fundamental inapplicability. Although coherence is often presented as the achievement of “rationality”, one could thus imagine a coherent scheme that does not follow the usual (Aristotelian) logical rules. Mythological thought, for instance: just as all the categorial concepts “hang together”, the symbolic interlocking used by mythological worldviews, as the history of civilizations reveals, shelter the inchoative power of reason looking for itself. So much so that some do not hesitate to claim that mythological explanation is more coherent—read: more unified—than the scientific one, the price to pay in terms of operationality, abstractive power, and opening being of course considerable. The mythological narrative secures a symbolical institution of the world that could be called quasi-systematical. In Eliade’s words, there is “an intimate coherence of all its different modalities.” It acts as a grid of reading and of building of the interaction between human beings and the (sur)natural realm(s). If we focus on the logical question, we are reminded that the participatory logic nourishing mythological constructs is not respectful of the Aristotelian principles. But each narrative is grounded in a strong coherence of its formative elements and upon a precise use of the ancient dichotomies, the same conceptual pairs that were also at work in the Presocratic systems (warm, cold, wet, dry; the four elements…). It is a participatory, polar and amphibological logic that is at work here. The ambiguity of the narrative is not a transient weakness due to some hidden cultural variable, it reflects the ontological texture of its world. Of course, the criterial hierarchy that has just been suggested would be turned upside down if we were not animated by an empiricist propensity. At any rate, the last possibility is to discriminate the ultimate intuitive ground itself, as it locks in the necessity of the debated scheme. One can indeed, for fully acceptable personal reasons, prefer to choose one Weltanschauung to another. Technically speaking, this corresponds to the rhetorical difference between to convince and to persuade, or between the rational and the reasonable: one can be convinced by an argument, i.e., recognize its complete rationality, and nevertheless not be persuaded at all of its immediate implications for oneself, i.e., not finding it reasonable. In such a case, the “universal” validity of the argument is acknowledged, but is actually rejected on the basis of its personal irrelevance. It is in this intuitive dialectic that the reason why metaphysical systems are rarely refuted lies. (A refutation of that intuitive ground—or intimate conviction—could of course occur in the public domain, by common consensus.) An immediate corollary is the sympathy with which one has to read an author if one wishes to penetrate the substance of his/her thought. One has to decide to see with the eyes of the philosopher, to use the time-old metaphor that is not foreign to the Whiteheadian corpus.

73 There is one topic that should help clarifying PM’s historical interpretation: how are Rescher’s transhistorical thesis and his erotetics (name given in other works to the business of raising and resolving questions) exactly geared? If “cognitive change regarding answers inevitably carries in its wake erotetic change with respect to questions” (PP59; cf., e.g., ID, ch. 1, NU, ch. 1 and Comp, ch. 6), doesn’t this imply that the “generic and potentially diffuse doctrinal tendency” (PP44) will be somehow modified by major shifts in worldview such as the one depicted by Koyré? To recall the case we have focused on: Whiteheadian percolation claims to axiomatize the chaosmos as it could be understood only after Bruno, Darwin, Planck and Einstein. So, if indeed “a question cannot arise before its time has come” (PP61), doesn’t this mean that Whiteheadian contiguism has acquired a stronger applicability and coherence than continuism Rescher advocates? Within the process-philosophy circle, it seems widely acknowledged that Alfred North Whitehead proposes the best possible (if not understandable65) process framework available. Nicholas Rescher rejects this on the basis of his heuristic transhistorical thesis. Although his grasp of Whitehead misses important details, his is undoubtedly a very refreshing standpoint. Especially since there has been lately a growing sense of scholasticism (if not academic sclerosis)—both from within and from without the cenacle. Many insiders do indeed complain about the spirit in which Whiteheadian thought is “helped” to establish its pedigree. But rare are those who do so publicly—while urbi et orbi criticisms are of course more frequent among outsiders. In neither cases is the sclerosis cured. Rescher’s renewed approach shows the importance of contrasting systems of thought; more importantly, it reminds us that philosophy is an activity in which ones entire existence is engaged. It is not a matter of right or wrong judgements; or of sectarian allegiance. “A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost”66… Quine has expressed his interest and respect for Whitehead’s philosophy of organism but was sceptical vis-à-vis his speculative

65

66

Borges has claimed that “nobody can understand the philosophy of our time without understanding the thought of Whitehead. Unfortunately, (almost) nobody can understand Whitehead.” (Our translation is inspired by the French edition: JorgeLuis Borges, Œuvres complètes. Préf. de l'auteur; éd. établ., prés. et annot. par Jean Pierre Bernès ; trad. par Paul Bénichou e.a. 2 v., Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1993 and 1999, vol I, p. 1210.) Aims of Education, p. 108, reprinted in The Organisation of Thought, p. 115.

74 breakaways. Rescher’s attitude is similar. The subsidiary question is: who is the serpent in whose paradise of Mediterranean beauty? It was the purpose of this introduction to show that, both worldviews being instrumental, each should be used to improve the applicability of the other. Hopefully, we have given arguments for such a cross-improvement.

References Cooper, Ron, “Critical Review of Process Metaphysics,” Newsletter of the Society for Advancement of American Philosophy, No. 74, 1996, pp. 35-37. Jones, Judith A., “Critical Review of Process Metaphysics,” International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 30, 1997, pp. 250-252. Ford, Lewis S., “Critical Review of Process Metaphysics,” Encounter, 58/1, Winter 1997, pp. 108-111. Lango, John W., “Critical Review of Process Metaphysics,” Transactions of the C. S. Peirce Society, Vol. 32, 1996, pp. 689-697. Rescher, Nicholas, “Trapped Within History: A Process Philosophical Refutation of Historisist Relativism,” Process Studies, Vol. 29, 2000, pp. 66-76. Shields, George W., “Critical Review of Process Metaphysics,” Process Studies, Vol. 25, 1996, pp. 131-134. Whitehead, Alfred North, Adventures of Ideas, New York and Cambridge, 1933. We quote The Free Press edition (New York, 1967) Whitehead, Alfred North, Modes of Thought. Six lectures delivered in Wellesley College, Mass., 1937-1938, and two lectures delivered in the University of Chicago, 1933, New York, Macmillan, and Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1938. We quote The Free Press edition (New York, 1968) Whitehead, Alfred North, Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology, Cambridge, University Press, and New York, Macmillan, 1929. We quote the Corrected edition. Edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne, New York— London, The Free Press. A division of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.— Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1978,

75 Whitehead, Alfred North, Science and the Modern World. The Lowell Lectures, 1925, New York, The MacMillan Company, 1925. We quote The Free Press edition (New York, 1967) Whitehead, Alfred North, The Aims of Education and Other Essays, New York/London, The MacMillan Company/Williams and Norgate, 1929. We quote The Free Press edition (New York, 1967) Whitehead, Alfred North, The Organisation of Thought, Educational and Scientific, London/Philadelphia, Williams and Norgate/J. B. Lippincott, 1917. We quote the Greenwood Press edition (Westport, Connecticut, 1974)

I. HISTORY OF PROCESS-PHILOSOPHY PROBLEMS OF METHOD AND DOCTRINE Michael Hampe (Zürich)

Abstract This essay argues that, contrary to what Rescher assumes, there is not one homogeneous concept or history of process-metaphysics. Different philosophers developed theoretical approaches that are much more comprehensive than the umbrella-term “process philosophy” suggests. Process thought is closely connected to the Philosophy of Life. It has had a practical or existential function in the devotional or edifying use of process language in religious traditions where the temporal nature of all things is emphasised. Furthermore, process philosophy is related to the empiricist tradition, to the developments in science in the 19th century, and to the scientific realism of Sellars and Quine. It can be regarded as a response to novel experiences in non-philosophical areas e.g. the sciences. Therefore, the sharp contrast between substance-metaphysics and process-metaphysics Rescher suggests does not do justice to the complex history of process thought.

1. Types of histories of philosophy Most existing histories of philosophy are examples of one of the following three types: the doxographic history (1), a problem-oriented history (2) and a history that follows (operates with) a strong conception of reason (3).1 A doxographic history will just list and describe the different “systems” of philosophy, following the principle that one can identify these systems by their authors. A historian of philosophical problems will favour the

1

Cf. Fulda 1991. See also Passmore 1965 and Geldsetzer 1968.

78 reconstruction of philosophical questions and riddles for the reconstructions of historical developments, producing, e.g., histories of the ontological proof of God´s existence2 or the sceptical doubt about the existence of an external world or scepticism in general.3 A historian of philosophy like Kant or Hegel, who believes in progress and the realization of Reason within the history of philosophy, will consider philosophical investigations not only with regard to their power to solve certain problems but with concern to their relevance for the actualisation of the “final goal” of the history of philosophy: the reality of a self-transparent reason or spirit (in the case of Hegel). In fact, Kant´s and Hegel´s histories of philosophy are special cases of histories of philosophical problems. Kant´s distinction between empiricism and rationalism in his essay on the progress of metaphysics4 was originally designed to place his own transcendental method at the “happy end” of a historical development. Later, however, it was used in many histories of philosophy in a much less ambitious way. For Hegel, the history of philosophy becomes an elucidation of the idea that the selftransparency of the spirit can be achieved only through Hegel’s own philosophical conception. He uses the history of philosophy as a means to show that his own strong philosophical views follow necessarily from history. Thus, one has to distinguish between histories of philosophical problems that are designed teleologically as a prelude to the course of a “golden history” of a strong systematic philosophical position (3 above) and problem oriented histories that are not teleological in this way, but rather follow guiding ideas or riddles and questions which are believed to have dominated the thought of many philosophers, and are possibly drawn from different traditions (2 above). Without using Kant´s and Hegel´s strong conception of reason, problem-oriented histories of philosophy, which lead to the philosophical point of view of the historian, are still found in contemporary thought. They can be found in the works of Heidegger, Whitehead and William James. All of them derive their view of the history of philosophy from their own specific approach to answering philosophical questions. Terms like Heidegger´s “Seinsvergessenheit,” Whitehead´s Adventures of Ideas and James distinction between monistic thinkers of “The One” and

2

Cf. Henrich 1960.

3

Cf. Popkin 1979 and Popkin 1997.

4

Kant 1975.

79 pluralistic philosophers of “The Many” are hardly of any use for the description of historical developments and contrasts as long as one does not take the systematic philosophical conceptions of these authors into account.5 However, Nicholas Rescher´s history of process metaphysics is somewhat different and cannot easily be subsumed under one of these types of histories of philosophy. On the one hand, there is no one and only system of process-metaphysics, and there is no single or easily identifiable group of problems that all those philosophers that he calls “processphilosophers” have tried to solve. And certainly the strong conception of reason that governed Kant´s and Hegel´s view of history has no relevance for most of the process philosophers Rescher discusses (with the possible exception of Peirce). On the other hand, there are process philosophers in Rescher´s sense, like Peirce, Whitehead, James and Dewey, that had their own strong view of the history of philosophy. But Rescher is not writing a Peirceian, Whiteheadian, Jamesian or Deweyan history of process philosophy. Nor does he try to justify his own philosophical views by means of this historical account. Rescher creates for process-metaphysics a dualistic contrast akin to the contrast, often used in Kantian developmental studies, between empiricism and rationalism of pre-Kantian-philosophy: a contrast between substance-metaphysics and non-substance-metaphysics in the history from Heraclitus to Sheldon. Thus, his historical sketch has much in common with the non-teleological, problem-oriented type of history of philosophical problems. Without presupposing that there is a single philosophical system to be called the process philosophy, Rescher seems nevertheless to adopt the view that there is a process philosophy that can be identified throughout and within the different conceptual schemes of western philosophical thought. Furthermore, he considers this project as a contribution to a philosophical discipline: to metaphysics. He characterizes this discipline as the “general theory of reality.” The defining characteristic that should make it possible to distinguish process metaphysics from all the other possible general theories of reality is the presence of certain “guiding ideas” as Rescher calls them. The central one is that natural existence should be described in terms like “process” (also “events,” “histories,” “happenings” etc.) rather than in terms like “things” or “substances.” Thus it is not a certain philosophical problem like the question, whether there can be a proof of God´s existence or of the existence of an external world, 5

Heidegger 1979. Ch. I, Whitehead 1933, Ch I.1. James 1975, p. 63 ff.

80 that is the guiding idea of Rescher´s historical considerations. Nor is it the history of reception (“Wirkungsgeschichte”) of a certain philosophical school, like the ancient sceptical one. There is not just one processphilosophical problem or school (although Whitehead and his followers appeared to some as such a “movement” in 20th century thought). These considerations raise several questions concerning the method of history in the philosophy that is appropriate to tell the history of process-philosophy. For instance, talking about process-metaphysics in contrast to, say, the metaphysics of substance, seems to presuppose a view of the history of philosophy as a sequence or struggle of different philosophies, a picture Kant used in his contrast between empiricism and rationalism and James in his above mentioned struggle between supporters of “block-universe” versus “pluralists.”6 In the history of science such a view would make little sense: one does not talk of “biologies” or “physics” in a strong plural sense, and there are no dual contrasts comparable to the above mentioned ones. Nor is it usual to describe the history of competing ideas and convictions, e.g. in the development of disciplines like anatomy or chemistry as a conflict between different “physics” or “chemistries”; independent from the conviction that the skull consists of x or y numbers of bones or that there are three or four different aggregate states, one would consider these as different opinions about or in anatomy and chemistry. The usual way of analysing scientific developments is to reconstruct a lineage of theories that have evolved under the unifying roof of a discipline. Even formulations like “Aristotelian,” “Newtonian” and “Einsteinian” physics are not really meant to question the unity of the discipline as long as one accepts that the explanation of the movement of inanimate bodies is the major task of all three enterprises, and does not interpret the change in paradigms as the disappearance and creation of disciplines (i.e. as long as one does not believe in incommensurability). 2. Philosophies Since Rescher considers process philosophy as a project taking place within the philosophical discipline “metaphysics,” “philosophy” cannot, in this context, be the name of a discipline, but is to be interpreted as a term for a doctrine. From this it might follow that Rescher uses the term “philosophy” in two meanings, which he does not explicitly distinguish: on the one hand, “philosophy” stands as the name for the superior system of 6

Cf. James 1975, p. 13 and James 1979, pp. 61 ff.

81 different disciplines like metaphysics, ethics, logic, epistemology, etc. On the other hand, “philosophy” designates doctrines in these disciplines, doctrines that can be identified by “guiding ideas.” Utilitarianism would be a philosophy in the sense of a doctrine in the discipline of ethics, idealism a philosophy or doctrine in the discipline of epistemology, and so forth. Philosophies in this doctrinal sense would deliver the propositional content to the disciplines. Disciplines would organise questions and topics. Thus the questions: “What is the final goal of human life?” and “What makes an action a good action?” are distinguished from questions like “What justifies a belief?” and “Do perceptions have a propositional content?” by the disciplinary topics they deal with: The final goal of life, good action, for instance, are topics related to ethics, whereas topics like the procedures of justification and the content of perception belong to epistemology. These topics naturally hang together, because, for example, in ethics one searches for true justified beliefs about the final goal of the human life. The disciplinary borders are not closed. Ethics, epistemology, metaphysics and other disciplines are parts of Philosophy in a systematic sense. The overall terminologies of the Philosophies restrict the scope of the possible arguments in these disciplines. In his concrete exposition of the history of process thought, Rescher follows the “doxographical method” of historiography by looking at the Philosophies of different philosophers, which are not just different doctrines in the philosophical disciplines. This is another peculiarity of the history of philosophy. Although philosophy is, like the sciences, very much a collective enterprise, probably much more so than the fine arts, it is much more connected to the interests and means of conceptual expression of individual persons than science. This doxographical procedure is quite common in the history of philosophy. In the history of science it is much less usual. Newton described great scientists as standing on the shoulders of giants, working on projects that they very rarely (if ever) inaugurated themselves. In this perspective, individual scientists are much less the focus of attention of those who reconstruct scientific developments than with individual philosophers in the history of philosophy. To talk of philosophies, to use the plural form without comment for this intellectual subject, results mainly from the fact that philosophical ideas are almost always associated with, and identified by, the names of the thinkers who framed them. There are many philosophies because there have been many philosophers. Insofar as Rescher discusses many philosophers who developed a process philosophy, one has to talk of

82 a pluralist process philosophy: there are as many process philosophies as there are process philosophers. However, the philosophers Rescher discusses (Plato and Aristotle, Leibniz and Hegel, Peirce and James, Bergson, Dewey and Whitehead) were not just developing certain doctrines of metaphysics that might have been guided by a certain common process philosophical idea or vocabulary. Beside the fact that it is a controversial issue whether Plato and Hegel were entertaining metaphysics, the different philosophers mentioned were formulating thoughts and developing concepts and theoretical structures that are much more comprehensive then the term “process philosophy” suggests. Especially Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz and Hegel dealt with almost any topic that one can understand as a philosophical one. And because they did it in a way or method that is characteristic of their often very individual way of thinking, they sometimes founded or dismissed philosophical disciplines. Sometimes a discipline that was considered philosophical and important almost disappeared and sometimes a non-existing discipline or a subsidiary subject becomes a foundation in a new systematic conception of philosophy. Thus, for example, Hegel makes ethics a subtopic in the philosophy of law in such a way that it almost disappears as an autonomous philosophical discipline. Peirce creates semiotics from a sideissue of epistemology and transforms the philosophy of signs into a new and a fundamental discipline of his philosophy. These examples show that the existence of philosophical disciplines depend on the existence of a plurality of Philosophies. If we describe those intellectual projects that found, delete or reorganise philosophical topics and disciplines as the Philosophies (with a capital P) of the philosophers, and if we characterize different doctrines that are developed in a philosophical discipline as philosophies (with a small p) we could say that the (disciplinary) philosophies depend on the Philosophies of the philosophers because only if a Philosophy makes it possible that there is a certain philosophical discipline—only then can there be a philosophical doctrine in this discipline. And the way this doctrine is developed will depend on the methods and guiding ideas of the Philosophies, because ideally a philosophical terminology, if it is a terminology of a Philosophy, will not change in the different philosophical disciplines. Although, e.g., the term “good action” may play an important role in ethics and no role in epistemology, the term “entelecheia” may come up in both disciplines as a term of Aristotelian Philosophy.

83 Thus a philosophical doctrine might be determined by guiding ideas it takes over from other doctrines that were developed in the tradition of the doctrine or by guiding ideas that were developed in the Philosophy of a certain philosopher. There is both a history of the philosophies as doctrines of disciplines and there is a history of the Philosophies of the philosophers. These two histories are not separable. Often a new conception of Philosophy is developed because of some problem in the tradition of a philosophical doctrine. One can argue that Kant´s conception of a transcendental philosophy is a reaction to the epistemological problems of Humean scepticism and the old metaphysical question of the possibility of a free will. Sometimes, as in the case of Kant, it seems impossible to continue the conceptual and topical tradition of a philosophical discipline without changing the disciplinary architecture of the Philosophies of the philosophers known so far. Dealing with the urgent questions of a discipline might force a philosopher to develop a new Philosophy, i.e. to reorganise the disciplines by developing new philosophical questions, topics and concepts. The change in the meanings of philosophical concepts is therefore both an indicator of developments in philosophical disciplines and an indicator of changing conceptions of Philosophy. Thus, problems in philosophical disciplines lead to changes in the history of Philosophy. Hegel’s idea that concepts develop is itself a guiding idea in his Philosophy. It is an idea that transforms his historiographical observations into a systematic theory about the “nature” of philosophical concepts. If one considers this idea as one that is characteristic of process thought in general, then Hegel’s thinking could be described as a process Philosophy that determines the terminology in many if not all the philosophical disciplines he deals with, i.e., that determines all his philosophical doctrines. On the other hand, a philosopher like Leibniz seems to accept a certain process-idea in his description of fundamental substances, namely the flow of perceptions, but he does not, as far as I can discern, organise all his philosophical doctrines and his entire terminology with a processphilosophical idea. Thus, he could be described as a philosopher who held a process philosophical doctrine but not as one who held a process Philosophy. It is therefore useful to distinguish between (1) processphilosophies as process-philosophical contributions to certain disciplines and (2) Process-Philosophies as systematic philosophical conceptions that organise philosophical disciplines with a process-philosophical conceptual scheme. Both types of enterprises have a history.

84 The history of process Philosophy might therefore be similar to something like the history of the “way of ideas.” For Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume and others the terminology around the concept “idea” was central for the description and explanation of mental activities. And although these philosophers were holding different doctrines about how the mind works, they formulated their doctrines using a more or less shared terminology. Thus it was possible to continue the idea-terminology without continuing the Cartesian doctrines. In the same way, process philosophers might share a certain fundamental terminology for the description of reality without sharing a doctrine. All Whiteheadians share the process-vocabulary with other process philosophers, but not all process philosophers share the Whiteheadian doctrines. 3. The Edifying Language of Process However, the very structure of philosophical thought sketched above is not historically constant. There is no reason to suppose that before Aristotle there were any Philosophies that could be divided into disciplines in which different doctrines, philosophies, are possible. As Pierre Hadot has shown,7 ancient philosophy is primarily not just a doctrinal enterprise but deals with ways of life. The philosophical life, as a life dedicated to the striving for wisdom, is described and justified in certain discourses. These discourses may contain descriptions and explanations of physical matters. They may also contain process-philosophical descriptions and explanations. But these descriptions and explanations are to be seen, at least in Pre-socratic times, and probably also in Plato, against the background of an understanding of philosophy as a way of life that may include ritual aspects as well. To consider what Heraclitus and Plato have to say about process, about coming into being and perishing, about change and repetition, only as doctrinal propositions is problematic because there were no philosophical disciplines at that time. It means in the end that one co-opts these philosophers to the list of precursors of a doctrine in a discipline that was founded much later.8 This co-option is a legitimate procedure that happens in all disciplines and doctrines. But in this very case it bears the danger of

7

Hadot 1981 and Hadot 1995.

8

Gottfried Heinemann (University of Kassel) gave me some fruitful hints about this issue.

85 ignoring the practical or existential implications of process-philosophical ideas and texts. It is well known from popular philosophical thought, both in the East and the West, that insights into the temporal nature of all things are considered as a very important part of all wisdom that leads to a special attitude towards life and death. This aspect is most probably also relevant to the process philosophical ideas of Heraclitus and Plato. It certainly has a great relevance in Stoic and Christian philosophy, where “mental exercises” for the “cultivation” of the soul often concentrate on the contemplation of human death and the unavoidable passing nature of all things.9 To consider the coming into being and perishing of things may thus first be an exercise in taking a certain stance or point of view with respect to reality that is considered as “mentally healthy” or “saving” and not understood as a theoretical doctrine which is only justified by arguments. Texts about the process of life, the coming and passing of cultures, as found in Marcus Aurelius’ conversations with himself, thus may not primarily have an argumentative but rather a performative character, or to use terms from the religious traditions, they may have an edifying or devotional function. It may be supposed that these texts were read and reread again and again in order to bring the soul into a certain attitude, i.e. to evoke and stabilise certain emotions. Texts from the Stoics (e.g. by Epictetus) are still used in this way today. Although one may consider this as an unenlightened or uncritical use of texts, a use that makes the mind just accustomed to certain ideas, imaginative patterns or phrases and does not lead to real beliefs (or arguments), it may nevertheless be a function of “process-speech” to remind or train the soul and not to convince it argumentatively of the passing nature of all things. Marcus Aurelius’ above mentioned writings were probably meant to be used in this way.10 Or it could be the other way round: Texts of this kind can also be the manifestation of a life lived in the perspective of the perishing nature of all things, and we may argue that this kind of life is a good life because of its peacefulness. Also the theoretical description of a process-reality may be an invitation to live a life in such a perspective or a rationalization of the emotions that are dominant for those 9

For the relation between stoic and christian exercises concentrating on the changeable nature of all things see Rabbow 1954.

10

Cf. Marcus Aurelius 1930. Book X.11: “Make thy own scientific system of enquiry (theoretiken methodon) into the mutual change of all things, and pay diligent heed to this branch of study and exercise thyself in it. For nothing is so conducive to greatness of mind.”

86 who have decided to live a life in such a perspective. The relevance of the edifying language of process for the development of metaphysical doctrines can be illustrated by the following passage from Whitehead: The best rendering of integral experience, expressing its general form divested of irrelevant details, is often to be found in the utterances of religious aspiration. One of the reasons of the thinness of so much modern metaphysics is the neglect of this wealth of expression of ultimate feeling. Accordingly we find in the first two lines of a famous hymn a full expression of the union of the two notions (that all things flow and that there is a relative permanence of patterns) in one integral experience: “Abide with me; / Fast falls the eventide.” Here the first line expresses the permanences, “abide”, “me” and the “Being” addressed; and the second line sets these permanences amid inescapable flux. Here at length we find formulated the complete problem of metaphysics.11 4. Philosophy of Life The connection between life and doctrine is also relevant for processthought in modern times in at least two ways: for pragmatism, presented by Rescher in his discussion of Peirce, James and Dewey; but also for the philosophy of life that can be found in the thought of Nietzsche, Dilthey and Simmel, a tradition of process philosophical discourse that Rescher does not discuss, without giving us any reason for this neglect. The idea that action is most relevant for finding out about meanings and beliefs, more relevant than states of consciousness alone (an idea that is present in pragmatism in many variations), must lead us to favour processual categories because “action” and “event” are terms that apply only to temporal entities. Consciousness as a state of a thinking substance may grasp a meaning or instantiate a belief instantaneously. But if it needs actions to find out what somebody really believes (also for the believing subject) and if the meaning of a word is revealed in the practical attitude a subject takes to the thing named by the word in question, then the revelation of beliefs and meanings needs time. The performative character of the edifying language of process has an echo in the melioristic tendencies of pragmatism. Peirce and James did not only use process philosophical terms of action in their theoretical

11

Whitehead, 1978, p. 208 f.

87 philosophy but believed that theoretical conceptions of the world determine the way human beings behave. The belief that the world can be brought into a state that is more acceptable to human beings will encourage people to try hard to make the world into a better place for themselves. As long as they consider this as possible, it is rather unlikely that they act contrary to their beliefs. Any Philosophy that believes in the possibility and the necessity to change the world by human action must therefore contain some elements of process thought. To think that reality has an eternal structure, which will, when mankind ever reaches Truth, fix the meanings of words and determine the aims of good actions, leads easily to the consideration that processes of change in the world and in the meaning of terms are transitory phenomena or are superficial appearances on the surface of a reality that is “at bottom” unchangeable. This thought is often, for example in Plato, connected with the conviction that reality or being can be “graded” and that things can be more or less real or have more or less being and are more or less perfect according to the “amount of being” they possess. The unchangeable eternal forms in Plato are in an emphatic sense; they are more real than everything that is bound to change; thus, change is not as real as the eternal structures of the forms. Human action and the processes of history cannot touch, in such a view, reality at its deepest level. To take time and human action seriously, to consider them as eminently real will lead to process philosophies that will take eternity not as predicate for what is “really real” and perfect. Furthermore, theory and action are intertwined in pragmatism in other ways. At the deepest level, probably in the conviction that the use of a sign or term is itself an action that influences the meaning of the sign or term, fact and value are connected. This idea is often stressed in recent pragmatism by Morton White, Hilary Putnam and Robert Brandom.12 The idea that all epistemic attitudes are taken up not by a disembodied consciousness of a thinking substance or a transcendental ego but by a living creature that has a body and therefore has non-epistemic interests and is struggling to stay alive, is central to the philosophy of life since Nietzsche. To claim that problems of life may determine epistemic problems or that the pursuit of truth may not be good for the fulfilment of the urge to stay alive, as Nietzsche suggests, brings the process of life into the philosophical view in a different way. The development of knowledge in individual subjects or in cultural communities may be considered as a 12

White 1981, passim.; Putnam 1992, p. 105 ff; Brandom 1994, I.1.

88 part or factor in the life of the subjects or the community. Insofar as “life” is a process-term, the philosophy of life bases its epistemological considerations on a processual interpretation of subjectivity, seeing subjects as organisms or as histories of actions and sufferings with an urge to stay alive. Although this philosophy of life might take a metaphysical turn, as for example in Nietzsche’s theory of the will to power as the “essence” of all life-processes, it does not necessarily have to do so. It may just be an attempt to base epistemology on a naturalistic theory of subjectivity, an attempt that is characteristic also of the Dewey of Experience and Nature or Reconstruction in Philosophy. It is a characteristic of the transformation of processual terms since Hegel in 19th century philosophies, that the absolutist epistemology of spirit is transformed by different thinkers into a processual perspectivism. In the theories of both Nietzsche and Dilthey the perspectives of life processes grow out of perspectives of other life-processes, without any privileged view that organises the totality of views that are produced by all the processes of life taken together.13 Such a process philosophical perspectivism can also be found in Whitehead. 5. Science and Empiricism In the ontologies of Sellars and Quine we find a motivation for a theory of process which is not primarily metaphysical.14 Both favour processes as fundamental entities: Quine calls them space-time-worms and the late Sellars “pure processes.” They come to their process-philosophical ontologies because they take certain developments in science, especially the quantum-field theory (Quine) and the naturalistic theory of consciousness (Sellars) very seriously. It is mainly their scientific realism that led them to a degradation of categories of substance, and not the internal debates of metaphysics. Nevertheless, some developments in Quine and Sellars are quite similar to those in Whitehead. There is an “ideological” tension in American Philosophy between the analytical and the metaphysical tradition, but this should not keep us from seeing that there are parallels in the ontological development of these two schools.

13

Analogies in Nietzsche´s and Dilthey´s thinking as process philosophies have been drawn by Werner Stegmaier 1992.

14

Sellars 1981, passim.; Quine 1981, Ch.1.

89 However, Rescher does not consider the process-ontologies of Quine and Sellars. It might be that Rescher assumes that process-thought is a metaphysical doctrine and for this reason leaves Locke and Hume out of his sketch of the historical background for process philosophy. However, for Whitehead, the “dominant figure” of the tradition in the 20th century, John Locke is “the writer who most fully anticipated the main positions of the philosophy of organism […] in his Essay.”15 One reason for Whitehead’s high esteem for Locke is that the “phrase ‘the real internal constitution of a particular existent’ in the description of a human understanding as the process of reflection upon data together with its elucidations are all to be found in Locke’s Essay.”16 One major method of Whitehead’s thought is the ontological treatment of categories that were originally developed to reconstruct processes of experience. The “way of ideas” of Descartes, Berkeley, Locke and Hume is today usually described as a predecessor of what had later been called epistemology and not so much as a metaphysical doctrine. However for Whitehead, the theories of the mind or of understanding in Descartes, Locke and Hume are very important “material” for process-metaphysics. This leads to another problem for a history of process-metaphysics, a problem that has methodological and doctrinal implications. Rescher writes in his section on Whitehead, that one can have a process philosophy that is oriented phenomenologically (in seeing process as fundamental in human experience and in the order of cognition), or biologically (in seeing process in life and in the order of organic existence), or physicalistically (in seeing process as fundamental in nature and in the order of physical existence). (PM 22) If one takes human experience as well as processes in biology and physics as sources of process philosophy one would get a very different historical picture, at least for process philosophies in modern times. The experience of a flow of sensations and ideas and its phenomenological descriptions, starting with Hume and Locke, would be its historical source. Another origin would be the developments in science in the 19th century, Darwin’s theory of evolution and the “dynamisation” of physics from Maxwell to Einstein. 15

Whitehead 1978, p. v.

16

Whitehead 1978, p. 210.

90 The methodological problem here is: in what sense process thought is to be considered as a philosophical reaction to developments in nonphilosophical areas of knowledge like history, biology and physics. Fortunately, philosophers do not only react to philosophers, but also to intellectual and cultural developments that were once considered philosophical but that have become, by the establishment of methods that are accepted by a community of researchers, autonomous areas of research. Sometimes the philosophical reaction to new scientific developments happens in one and the same person as for example in William James. His concept of a “stream of consciousness” could be described as a scientific one, relating to experiences of plasticity in the physiology of the brain.17 His philosophical interpretations of his psychological and physiological findings may have led him in his later philosophical work to claim, in Rescher´s own words, that “reality […] is nothing but a structured manifold of processes”(p.15). This development can be described as a process of philosophical generalization from a conceptual innovation in a specialized theory of human experience. No matter how this reaction of philosophy to the more specialized research is to be reconstructed in the concrete historical situations, it should be possible to say the following about the overall processes of the developing scientific and philosophical terminology: later philosophical terminologies react to earlier ones, but they do so not only because of some internal problems in the philosophical systems. Philosophical terminologies also become “stale” or unacceptable because it is impossible to interpret new scientific and every day experiences with them or because new scientific terminologies suggest more plausible alternatives to the old philosophical concepts. The concept of evolution, the empirical data and their interpretation in the theories of Lamarck and Darwin are very important for the process-philosophical elements in Peirce and Dewey. And data from experimental physiology and psychology and from reports on the psychology of religious conversions are very important for James insofar as he is to be considered a process-philosopher. Perhaps one could go so far to say that novelties in process-philosophies are in modern times always also a reaction to novel experiences and concepts in the more specialized sciences and never only a critique of older philosophical points of view. Thus the contrast between substancemetaphysics and process-metaphysics is too simple to provide a reliable 17

James 1981, p. 228f. and 239 f.

91 and fruitful guiding idea for a comprehensive reconstruction of the history of process thought.18

18

It is my pleasure to thank Felicitas Kraemer, Maria-Sibylla Lotter and Helmut Pape for their reading and commenting on drafts of this paper.

92 References Brandom, Robert, 1994. Making it explicit. Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment. Cambridge/Mass. and London. Dewey, John, 1982. Reconstructions in Philosophy, Southern Illinois. Dewey, John, 1919. Experience and Nature, London. Fulda, Hans Friedrich, 1991. “Was ist Philosophiegeschichte und zu welchem Ende studiert man sie?,” in: Hans Jörg Sandkühler (ed.), Geschichtlichkeit der Philosophie. Theorie. Methodologie und Methode der Historiographie der Philosophie, Frankfurt a. M. / Bern / New York / Paris, 31-56. Geldsetzer, Lutz, 1968. Die Philosophie der Philosophiegeschichte im 19. Jahrhundert. Zur Wissenschaftstheorie der Philosophiegeschichtsschreibung und -betrachtung. Studien zur Wissenschaftstheorie Band 3. Meisenheim am Glan. Hadot, Pierre, 1981. Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, Paris. Hadot, Pierre, 1995. Qu´est-ce que la philosophie antique?, Paris. Heidegger, Martin, 1979. Sein und Zeit, Tübingen15. Henrich, Dieter, 1960. Der ontologische Gottesbeweis. Sein Problem und seine Geschichte in der Neuzeit, Tübingen: Mohr James, William, 1975, Pragmatism, Cambridge / Mass and London. James, William, 1979, Some Problems of Philosophy, Cambridge / Mass and London. James, William, 1981. The Principles of Psychology. Vol I, Cambridge / Mass and London. Kant, Immanuel, 1975. Über die von der Königl. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin für das Jahr 1791 angesetzte Preisfrage: Welches sind die wirklichen Fortschritte, die die Metaphysik seit Leibnizens und Wolffs Zeiten in Deutschland gemacht hat. In: Kants Werke Band III, Hamburg: Meiner, p. 587-676. Marcus Aurelius Antonius, 1930. The Communings with Himself (revised Text and translation by C. R. Haines. Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge / Mass. and London. Passmore, John, 1965.”The Idea of a History of Philosophy,” History and Theory. Studies in the Philosophy of History. Beiheft 5, S´Gravenhage. Popkin, Richard Henry, 1979. The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, Berkeley. Popkin, Richard Henry, 1997. Scepticism in the Enlightenment, Dordrecht. Putnam, Hilary 1992. Renewing Philosophy, Cambridge(Mass.) and London. Quine, Williard Van Orman, 1981. Theories and Things, Cambridge (Mass.) and London. Rabbow, Paul, 1954. Seelenführung. Methodik der Exerzitien in der Antike, München. Sellars, Wilfrid, 1981. “Foundations for a Metaphysics of Pure Process,” The Monist 64, 1, 3-90, La Salle. Stegmaier, Werner, 1992. Philosophie der Flutuanz. Dilthey und Nietzsche, Göttingen. White, Morton, 1981. What Is and What Ought To Be Done, Oxford.

93 Whitehead, Alfred North 1978. Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology. Corrected Edition. Edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne, New York and London. Whitehead, Alfred North, 1933. Adventures of Ideas, Cambridge.

II. THE TAMING OF CHANGE Lieven Decock (Tilburg)

Abstract The paper endorses Rescher’s claim that process philosophy is compatible with empiricism and naturalism (PM 32), and mentions some results from biology, cosmology, and elementary particle physics in support. Subsequently it demonstrates that in cosmology and elementary particle physics all change can be characterised precisely by means of mathematical equations. Temporal change, which is essential for process philosophy, can thus be “tamed.” However, it seems that mathematics is immune to temporal change, and this can be regarded as a genuine problem for process metaphysics. The paper further analyses some consequences and ways out. It concludes that the ontological status of mathematical entities is a genuine problem for process philosophers. The least unnatural way out is probably opting for an intuitionist or constructivist conception of mathematics.

In the second chapter of his Process Metaphysics, Rescher presents the most basic ideas of his process philosophy. He emphatically defends process philosophy against substance philosophy. In my comment, I will challenge this basic opposition (which is similarly at work throughout the whole book). I will show that substance philosophy cannot be properly regarded as a serious competitor to process philosophy. Instead, I will propose a more serious competitor to process philosophy, namely neoPythagoreanism. In view of this new opposition, it will become evident that process philosophers should be called upon to formulate their position within a clear philosophy of mathematics. I will argue on the basis of recent empirical results in physics, in accordance with Rescher’s suggestion that process philosophy “can even

96 issue in substantially naturalistic doctrine if, at the metaphysical level, one regards the world as a congeries of highly diversified but interrelated natural processes, leaving details to be worked out by the positive (natural) sciences.” (PM 32) Rescher’s remark that “Nothing in principle prevents process metaphysics from taking a predominantly empiristic and naturalistic line” (ibid.) is, it will be revealed, a significant understatement. In the first section, I will show that results in modern physics support process philosophy to a greater extent than Rescher or other process philosophers claim. In the second section I will point out that the decline of substance philosophy has its drawbacks, as a new competitor has arrived on the scene, namely neo-Pythagoreanism. In view of contemporary developments in physics, it has become possible to claim that the basic structure and ontology of the world is mathematical. In the next section, I point out that process philosophers have erroneously neglected mathematics in the past. The static and eternal nature of mathematics should be regarded as a genuine problem. In the fourth section, I explore some ways out. Nominalism and naturalism are implausible. However, intuitionism proves the most compatible with process philosophy.1 1. Process Philosophy Vindicated by Modern Physics Throughout PM, Rescher points out a few developments in modern science that support process philosophy. Whitehead had already indicated that new scientific developments in quantum mechanics and the special theory of relativity undermines traditional substance philosophy. I will propose evidence that modern science provides an even stronger vindication of process metaphysics than Whitehead could foresee and than Rescher now claims. Rescher stresses the importance of quantum mechanics in the demise of classical atomism, and gives a few examples. The structure of an atomic nucleus with electrons around it cannot be modelled after a stable planetary system, as Rutherford suggested. Quantum mechanics shows that at the microlevel what was traditionally considered as a “physical thing, a stably perduring object, is itself no more than a statistical pattern—a stability wave in a surging sea of process” (PM 98). The particle conception of physical objects is replaced by means of a field conception. 1

I would like to thank Michel Weber, Leon Horsten, Jeremy McKenna, Mark van Atten, Jaap van Brakel, and Bart Vandenabeele for valuable comments.

97 These fields are hard to interpret, and can be most naturally regarded as statistical patterns, describing the probability of a ‘particle’ being at some place, or having some momentum. The statistical nature of the wave function is completely at odds with a mechanistic world view. Rescher concludes that chance plays an essential role at the microlevel, and so that there is room for “creative spontaneity and innovation.” Rescher’s appeal to quantum mechanics is rather brief. Upon closer inspection, there are many more features of quantum mechanics that are incompatible with classical atomism or mechanism. One of the strange properties of ‘particles’ is their ‘spin’. This is a quantum mechanical property that is mathematically related to rotation. However, it is difficult to imagine how point masses can have an internal rotation. If, on the other hand, particles such as electron were regarded as extended rotating objects, then the centrifugal force of the spinning motion would break up the electron. The quantum-mechanical spin does not fit with a substance view of elementary particles. Another important consequence of quantum mechanics is a holistic view of nature. It is no longer possible to consider isolated particles or systems of particles, because the surrounding environment will always have an influence on the system under consideration. The isolated system and its environment should always be considered as an global interacting system. The traditional atomistic view of nature must therefore be abandoned. The universe is not a congeries of isolated particles or chunks of matter, but reacts as a whole. Of course, for most practical applications, one can consider isolated systems, and predict their behaviour, because corrections for quantum-mechanical effects are almost negligible. Nevertheless, the holistic character of nature has clearly been demonstrated in an experiment set up by Alain Aspect, based on the theoretical work of Bell. Particles can have mutual influence, even though they are too far apart for this to happen by means of messenger particles, because the latter would have to move faster than the speed of light. The only explanation is that the system reacts as a whole, in accordance with the predictions of quantum mechanics. An even more drastic discovery is that elementary particles, or rather particle waves, are not stable. In quantum electrodynamics and quantum chromodynamics, it has become clear that particles can decay or split up into other particles, or that in reactions of elementary particles, new particles can be formed. The number of particles2 of one sort is not 2

‘Particle’ may already be a misnomer, as the term is used to denote fields.

98 stable. Particles are no longer the basic constituents of the universe, but the number of particles of some sort is a characteristic of the state of the universe at some time. Process philosophers must be delighted with the terminology physicists use, as particles and antiparticles are called creation- and annihilation operators (in a Hilbert-space). Equally interesting from the point of view of process philosophy is the description of the interaction of elementary particles. In calculating the reactions of elementary particles, physicists use a type of mathematical formalism developed by Richard Feynman. All the trajectories, called Feynman diagrams, leading from the incoming particles to the outgoing particles are taken into consideration. This means that tracks involving all kinds of newly formed particles during the process can be considered. A widespread interpretation of Feynman’s formalism consists in regarding the various paths as ‘possible interactions’ and the particles in the diagrams as ‘virtual particles’. It is interesting to see that we are essentially dealing with processes, and that the notion of particle has become confused. Not only quantum mechanics, but also the theory of relativity lends further credibility to process philosophy. Whitehead was one of the first philosophers to embrace the theory of relativity, and to encompass it within his own philosophy. From the special theory of relativity, Whitehead borrowed the idea of world lines, and took these to be physical objects, rather than pointlike events, or three-dimensional objects. However, Rescher is more cautious about the possible benefits of relativity theory. He also points out that Whitehead had already some qualms, and sought “a new basis to relavity theory” (PM 99). Rescher’s major objection is that in the special theory of relativity, the time factor is to a large extent suppressed. Rescher’s worry is fully justified. In the special theory of relativity, all events take place in a given four-dimensional Minkowski space. The space-time frame is as it were fixed a priori, and is invariant in time. The time dimension itself is part of the frame. This conception of space and time as a space-time manifold very much resembles the Newtonian view on space, which Rescher harshly criticises. The only difference is that instead of using two “containers within […] which natural processes transpire” (PM 95), namely a separate space-‘container’ and a time-‘container’, the two are taken together as a single block. The space-time conception is again absolute, and differs profoundly from Leibniz’s relativistic conception. The time factor, essential in a processual view, has been tamed and reduced to a subjective phenomenon.

99 However, Rescher’s complaints have been largely overcome in the general theory of relativity. Space and time no longer constitute a frame within which events take place, but are inextricably involved in the basic equations of the general theory of relativity. The space-time metric depends on the contents of space. Matter is able to curve space around it. This interdependence is described by Einstein’s equation, the central equation of the general theory of relativity. The equation relates the spacetime metric to the energy-momentum tensor. The result is a dynamic conception of space and time. The metrical structure of the universe evolves together with the events taking place within3 the structure. A few well-known examples from cosmology clearly illustrate the dynamic spatial structure of the universe. Space is said to be expanding after an initial Big Bang. The spatial expansion is not the drifting apart of concentrations of matter within a prefixed frame, but is the change of the frame itself. Another example is the creation of black holes. In the last decades, the existence of black holes has been firmly established. They can exist at the core of galaxies, or can be formed in a supernova explosion, which marks the terminal stage of the evolution of a massive star. Supernova explosions are regularly observed, and therefore we can conclude that very radical changes in the structure of space and time in certain areas of the universe occur with similar regularity. The conception of space and time in the general theory of relativity must seem quite attractive to process philosophers. The view I have just presented accords extremely well with some of Rescher’s demands: “Space-time is itself part of the overall law structure that nature’s processes internalize. […] Space and time are, in the final analysis, no more—but also no less—than inherent aspects of the characteristic interrelationship of physical processes.” (PM 95) There is very little reason to claim that process philosophers should prefer quantum mechanics to relativity theory. Both branches of physics naturally lead to a processual view on nature. Rescher only mentions the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. But these are not the only physical disciplines that lead to process philosophy. A similar line of reasoning is possible for other disciplines such as thermodynamics. It suffices to mention Prigogine’s

3

As matter and the space-time structure are essentially entwined, the word ‘within’ cannot really have its usual meaning. The lack of a better expression illustrates the limitations of ordinary language in describing these phenomena.

100 work. His results on nonequilibrium systems has given a new impulse to process philosophy. In conclusion, the substance view has been completely abandoned in contemporary physics. Developments in twentieth century physics have displaced many traditional basic intuitions concerning particles, waves, space and time, interactions, etc. This leaves room for new ways of philosophising. Especially philosophical theories stressing the processual character of nature become very plausible. 2. Neo-Pythagoreanism versus Process Philosophy However, there is a new threat to process philosophy. The development of modern science may have shaken our basic intuitions to such an extent that even the notion of process has become irrelevant. Though various features of modern physics, e.g. its holism, the connection between space, time and matter, fit nicely within a processual view, it remains difficult to identify processes precisely. The best candidates for basic processes, i.e. the elementary constituents of an ontology of processes, are the interactions between elementary particles, as described in Feynman’s formalism. However, providing a straightforward interpretation of these processes in not evident. In addition, the statistical nature of the wave function in the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is, according to many physicists, unsatisfactory. As Richard Feynman put it: There was a time when the newspapers said that only twelve men understood the theory of relativity. I do not believe there ever was such a time […]. On the other hand I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” (Feynman 1965, p. 129) The lack of a natural interpretation of quantum mechanics is as much a problem for process philosophy as it is for substance philosophy. The general theory of relativity is slightly better off, but few can say that they have a good understanding of it. The difficulty in identifying processes in it is quite problematic for process philosophers. At first glance, these problems of identification may seem to jeopardise the very project of physics. Nevertheless, current theories provide very precise empirical predictions, and lead to technological innovations. The mathematical framework in both quantum mechanics and intake theory of relativity is extremely reliable, though hard to interpret. From a practical point of view, this situation is unproblematic. Physics has become a search for an adequate mathematical formalism, and the problem

101 of finding relevant intuitive interpretations is often ignored. Especially in the present search for string theories, which are believed to provide a global description of everything, mathematical considerations are far weightier than philosophical intuitions. The way physicists think about their discipline need not necessarily be philosophically relevant, but in recent years, this has become the case. The reliability and stability of the mathematical framework, in contrast with the fugacity of its philosophical interpretations has revitalised a longforgotten philosophical doctrine, namely Pythagoreanism. It has become tempting to claim that the mathematical structure of the universe underlies everything. Instead of regarding objects or processes as the fundamental elements of one’s ontology, one can be ontologically committed to mathematical entities instead, and regard everything else as an exemplification of some mathematical structure. In quantum electrodynamics, one can regard Feynman’s diagrams as a series of mathematical structures, and claim that there are no physical processes underlying the formalism. The diagrams and the related formulas are basic. Similarly, in relativity theory, one can take Einstein’s equation as basic, and countenance its solutions, without asking oneself how an energymomentum tensor, or metric tensor should be explained from a physicalphilosophical point of view. We have mathematical formulas and solutions to the formulas, being numbers, functions, fields, etc.4 Neo-pythagoreanism is pernicious for process philosophy. It is hard to imagine something more stable, atemporal, and a priori than mathematics. Temporal change is completely tamed. We can avoid the problem of events taking place in some a priori space-time container, but nothing is really gained, as events coincide with some mathematical structure. According to the traditional view on mathematical structures, these exist independently of temporal change. The time factor is normally given by the mathematical variable t in the various physical formulas, and the physical properties and processes in the universe can be described by means of functions containing this variable.

4

This possibility is also mentioned in Prigogine & Stengers 1984, p. 218: “After relativity, physicists […] could still conceive of a supreme mathematician who, as Einstein claimed, neither cheats nor plays dice. This mathematician would possess the formula of the universe, which would include a complete description of nature.” It is only a small step from here to a mathematical ontology.

102 Since very few philosophers5 have ever defended Pythagoreanism, process philosophers never worried much about Pythagoreanism. To begin with, Pythagoras’ school has always been associated with mysticism. Many philosophers, Mill for one, have even tried to avoid all the ontological commitments of mathematics. Only Quine (1976a, 1979), has really played with the idea of a hyper-Pythagoreanism in the midseventies. In Quine’s philosophy, physical objects are normally the contents of space-time regions. In the two mentioned articles, he put forward a reduction of the contents of space-time regions to the space-time regions themselves, and subsequently reduced the regions to the sets of their coordinates. This resulted in an ontology of sets of numbers only. Quine’s hyper-Pythagoreanism was mainly based on logical considerations.6 However, the recent developments in modern physics are far more important, though they are yet to influence major philosophers. One cannot doubt however, that forms of neo-Pythagoreanism will soon be defended. From a naturalist point of view, this has become a viable philosophical position. 3. Process Philosophy and Mathematics I present neo-Pythagoreanism as a rival to process philosophy not because I wish to defend this position myself, but in order to underline a more urgent worry. Mathematics has none of the characteristics process philosophers desire. In my view, however, it is impossible to sweep these problems under the carpet. Mathematics cannot be considered as a practical tool or even recreation; it is an indispensable part of the scientific and philosophical web of belief.7 Process philosophers should either admit that mathematics is incompatible with process philosophy, and that it therefore marks the limits of the doctrine, or find a way to fit mathematics

5

Some physicists have defended rather strong forms of neo-Pythagoreanism, see e.g. Dirac 1938.

6

For a longer exposition on Quine’s hyper-Pythagoreanism, see Decock 2001, and Decock 2002b, sections 3.3, and 3.6.

7

Whitehead (1978, p. 199) seems to claim the opposite: “There is no difficulty in imagining a world — i.e., a cosmic epoch — in which arithmetic would be an interesting fanciful topic for dreamers, but useless to practical people engrossed in the business of life.” Already in view of the examples given in the first section I think this position is untenable. For a longer exposition of my views of the indispensability argument in the philosophy of mathematics, see Decock 2002b.

103 within a processual framework. The problem cannot be ignored, in view of the threat of neo-Pythagoreanism, which, from a naturalist point of view, is a far more credible competitor to process philosophy than substance philosophy. Process philosophers have seldom dealt with the role of mathematics in process philosophy. Even Whitehead, though he was coauthor of Principia Mathematica8, has not really incorporated mathematics (except geometry)9 within process philosophy. Henry and Valenza, in two of the very few publications on the matter, have complained that Whitehead’s conception of eternal or mathematical ideas is too static.10 Hartshorne also admits in passing that the truths of mathematics are eternal: I see no good reason to accept the timelessness of truth, apart at least from very abstract truths about things themselves eternal

8

The logicism in Principia Mathematica (i.e. the reduction of mathematics to logic) explains to a great extent why mathematics is ignored. Whitehead sincerely believed that all mathematical theorems were basically logical theorems, and it was commonly accepted that logic did not need an ontology. However, for two reasons, this still does not justify the gap in Whitehead’s philosophy. First, already in the thirties the problems with logicism became very clear. The reductionist view came under serious pressure when logic and set theory grew apart. Second, even if logic does not have an ontology of its own, still the epistemological status of logic should be explained. The role of the laws of logic in Whitehead’s philosophy is not immediately compatible with a processual view.

9

Of course, Whitehead has an elaborate theory of extensive abstraction, which could be regarded as philosophy of mathematics, see Whitehead 1919, Whitehead 1957, chapter IV, Whitehead 1978, part IV. The method of extensive abstraction is basically the construction of abstract geometrical spaces. Apart from the fact that it is disputable whether geometry belongs to mathematics or physics, most other mathematical concepts are used without further reflection. In view of the elaborate account of points, lines, and volumes, it is striking that basic mathematical notions such as class (e.g. abstractive class, Whitehead 1919, p. 104), or number (e.g. coordinates, Whitehead 1919, p. 149) are left unexplained. Moreover, the construction is vulnerable to the threat of neo-Pythagoreanism. If, in Quine’s vein, one takes the coordinate systems as basic, instead of events and the abstracted spaces, one immediately ends with a geometry in which mathematical objects are basic.

10

See Henry & Valenza 2001, 55; Henry & Valenza 1993, 34. In the journal Process Studies, only one other article (Gunter 1999) has dealt with the role of mathematics within process philosophy.

104 or timeless, such as those of arithmetic or formal logic […]. (1970, p, 222) No further comments are made on the status of these eternal truths. For most process philosophers mathematics is a harmless or unimportant oasis of stability in an ever-changing universe. As far as I could trace, the position of mathematics within process philosophy is hardly dealt with in Rescher’s work. In Process Metaphysics, mathematics is almost entirely absent. Apart from some allusions to Zeno’s paradoxes (PM 24, 40, 127), only the role of differential equations in Leibniz’s philosophy is briefly mentioned. Rescher applauds Leibniz’s processual conception of mathematics: […] it is the mathematical language of differential equations that best represents its language of process. In this regard as in so many others, Leibniz had insight far beyond his time. […] it is nevertheless the mathematical language of process—of transformation functions and differential equations—that is essential for representing the world’s physical realities. (PM 92) The passage is worth citing because differential equations do not strengthen the case of the process philosopher, but rather form a genuine problem. In the development of modern mathematics, the notions of function, differential equation, etc. have radically changed. The demand that all functions be algebraically defined has been abandoned. A function is now any set of ordered pairs. The set containing all functions of objects of a certain type is thus an a priori object in a set-theoretic universe.11 New methods of solving differential equations have also been developed. Though Leibniz’s step by step integration of differential equations is generally used in computer algorithms, exact methods exist for certain types of differential equations. They yield classes of functions, depending on one or more parameters. These techniques are incompatible with notions such as “flowing curves” or “unfolding” (PM 12). Mathematical analysis has become static. The consequence is that process philosophy faces a major difficulty. Even if neo-Pythagoreanism is dismissed as too far-fetched, and not regarded as a genuine competitor, the mathematical formulation of modern physics still contradicts some basic tenets of process philosophy. Even if the ontology consists not of mathematical entities but of processes (or objects), the differential equations still express the lawlike behaviour of 11

For a brief historical account, see Maddy 1997, 116-128.

105 processes. All the basic equations of physics—Schrödinger’s, Dirac’s, Einstein’s, etc.—are differential equations, in which the time factor is given by a mathematical variable. Temporal change is thus completely tamed. Time is not a container in which all events take place, but can be perfectly described with the mathematical set of the real numbers. The evolution in time of certain physical properties can be described by means of mathematical functions, with a time variable. The complete description of a reality of processes is thus described by means of mathematical structures that are independent of temporal change. Even if reality is not static, process philosophers must dislike the fact that the conceptual framework used to describe it does remain static. It would be most reassuring if mathematics could be better incorporated within process philosophy. 4. Ways Out A first strategy to avoid the problems of mathematics is a head-on attack on mathematical Platonism. The difficulties would be removed if it could be shown that mathematics has no ontology of its own, that there is no Platonic Heaven, that the mathematical truths are not eternal, but mere regularities. This strategy has been well represented in the philosophy of mathematics and is known as nominalism.12 However, process philosophy is not really compatible with nominalism. A first well-known attempt to eliminate all mathematical entities was Goodman and Quine’s joint paper “Steps toward a constructive nominalism.” Goodman and Quine countenanced a finite ontology consisting of physical objects, which could be inscriptions. They provided a nominalistic theory in which mathematical formulas and proofs could be characterised. However, even apart from intrinsic problems with the project—the notion of proof was very counterintuitive—the strategy is unpalatable for the process philosopher, as it relies on an extreme form of substance philosophy. In Hartry Field’s geometrical strategy, space-time regions are taken as basic objects of the ontology. Again, this is incompatible with Rescher’s view on the space-time framework. Perhaps modal strategies would work, though it is hard to see how the modal framework and process philosophy fit together.

12

In fact, there is rather a cluster of such strategies. For an overview, see Burgess & Rosen 1997.

106 Another way out is to mitigate the claim that mathematics is static. One can regard mathematics as a scientific discipline that has evolved in time. Even a superficial glance at the history of mathematics suffices to see that the conceptual apparatus of mathematics has evolved over time. It is in principle possible to claim that mathematics is a scientific discipline as any other, and fits within the processual view on scientific inquiry portrayed by Rescher in the eighth chapter of his book. One could maintain that the objects and concepts of mathematics can only be characterised by their mutual relationships, and that therefore any conceptual change or revolution in mathematics has reverberations throughout the entire conceptual web. This line of defence is not absurd, and is quite compatible with the views of Lakatos or French philosophers of mathematics such as Poincaré or Cavaillès. However, there is something embarrassing about too strong a holistic naturalism in mathematics. In most sciences, there are no truly permanent results. The theories, concepts and classifications in practically all sciences have evolved over time, and no chunks of theories have remained completely immune to revision. No concepts or objects posited in Newton’s physics have survived the advent of Einstein’s theory of relativity. The role and interplay of concepts such as mass, velocity, etc. have undergone a conceptual shift. Atoms have proved to be divisible, many elementary particles are actually composed of quarks. In biology, Linnaeus’ classificatory schemes have been completely overthrown. In biology and chemistry the concept of natural kind is under pressure.13 In mathematics however, most results are permanent. Calculations in arithmetic are not likely to be overthrown because of new mathematical insights. 2+2 will remain 4. Mathematical theorems will not change easily either, except when a flaw is discovered, but then one concludes that the theorem never really has been a theorem. As Quine brilliantly put it, “Irrefragability, thy name is mathematics.” (Quine 1976b, p. 22) In order to claim that conceptual and ontological changes in mathematics are widespread and inevitable, one has to consider mathematics as an integrated whole. This idea was rather prevalent in the beginning of the twentieth century. The work of Frege, Peano, Russell, and Whitehead instigated a quest for the ultimate roots of mathematics, including reduction programs to express and prove all mathematical theorems by means of basic concepts and inference rules. Though the research program intended to ground mathematics by means of a few 13

See e.g. Dupré 1993, van Brakel 2000.

107 fixed, intuitive or a priori concepts and principles, the failure to provide a satisfactory basis for set theory, and the subsequent disintegration of the program around the middle of last century, rather gave rise to the idea that mathematics is ill founded, and that its basic concepts are unstable. In this sense, the failure of the foundationalist program in mathematics rather supported the view that mathematics is a discipline in evolution on a par with physics, biology, etc., and that its concepts are constantly on the run. On the other hand, it is equally possible to interpret the decline of the foundationalist program in another way. It can be claimed that the search for roots in mathematics is misguided from the onset, and that it fundamentally misrepresents the nature of mathematics. Antifoundationalists can perfectly claim that certain parts of mathematics have remained stable, and will remain unaffected by philosophical shifts in logic and set theory. The foundationalist program did not alter the age-old results in number theory or geometry. There is ample evidence to claim that many results in mathematics have been discovered centuries ago, and survived unaltered, and are not likely to change soon. From a naturalistic point of view, and taking into due consideration the historical changes in mathematics, the static nature of mathematics poses a challenge for process philosophy. There is still another position in philosophy of mathematics, which in my view is the most natural way out for process philosophers, namely intuitionism. It is striking that process philosophers have paid so little attention to a philosophical doctrine quite compatible with the basic ideas of process philosophy. In intuitionism mathematics loses its static character. One would expect that process philosophers would either embrace intuitionism, or at least explain why intuitionism is unacceptable after all. The heyday of intuitionism practically coincided with the rise of process philosophy. It is especially remarkable that Whitehead, who at some important stage in his career, was very interested in the foundations of mathematics, did not discuss intuitionism. In intuitionism, time is extremely important. In his doctoral dissertation (1907), Brouwer uses time as the basis for all mathematics, which has repercussions for science as a whole: Where scientific experience finds its origin in the application of intuitive mathematics to reality and, apart from experimental science, no other science exists barring only the properties of intuitive mathematics, we can call a priori only that one thing which is common to all mathematics and is on the other hand sufficient to build up all mathematics, namely the intuition of

108 many-oneness, the basic intuition of mathematics. And since in this intuition we become conscious of time as change per se, we can state: The only a priori element in science is time. (Brouwer 1975, p, 60) The same idea of an unfolding in time is expressed as: [Intuitionistic mathematics] comes into being by selfunfolding of the basic intuition of mathematics, which consists in the abstraction of two-ity. (Brouwer 1975, p. 477) The time mentioned in the first quote is a basic feature of reality, and should not be considered as a scientific artefact. Brouwer explicitly distinguishes intuitive time14 from scientific time, the latter being a onedimensional co-ordinate having a one-parameter group (Brouwer 1975, p. 61 fn2). Brouwer’s ideas are related to Kant’s views on arithmetic.15 However, Brouwer has better developed these ideas. He has developed as much of mathematics as possible in this vein. Worth mentioning is his way of dealing with the real numbers. There are indenumerably many real numbers. It is not possible to describe all real numbers with finite constructions of sequences. Brouwer therefore introduced choice sequences as mathematical primitives. A point in the continuum is presented as a (choice) sequence of nested intervals of rational numbers. The sequence starts at some moment in time, and unfolds by means of consecutive actions, namely the choices of new intervals. Some of the choice sequences are to some extent ‘tamed’ by means of regularities in the making of the choices. Apart from these lawlike choice sequences there are non-lawlike sequences, which are ‘unfinished’ and whose temporal unfolding is essential. In Brouwer’s treatment of the real numbers, temporal change and activity (choosing) is basic.16 The temporal aspect is also essential to Brouwer’s conception of mathematical deduction and mathematical proof. Theorems are not only 14

It would be interesting to present a more elaborate comparison between Brouwer’s notion of intuitive time and Whithead’s notions of “the passage of nature” (1957, p. 54, 1919, p. 80), or “creative advance of nature” (1919, p. 81), in their character of extension.

15

Cf. Kant 1933, A143: “Number is therefore simply the unity of the synthesis of the manifold of a homogeneous intuition in general, a unity due to my generating time itself in the apprehension of the intuition.”

16

For a longer exposition on Brouwer’s choice sequences, see van Atten 2003.

109 dependent on the existence of a proof, but on the actual construction of a proof. Mathematics is not a collection of structures and theorems existing in a Platonic Heaven, waiting for some mathematician to use or prove them. It is an evolving discipline, and its content is dependent on the actual construction of proofs over time. In conclusion, intuitionism is akin to process philosophy. The idea of time and temporal change is basic; time is essentially used in the very basic concepts of mathematics, and mathematics as a scientific discipline evolves over time. It is hard to see why process philosophers have not hailed intuitionism. One of the reasons could be that intuitionism is not widely accepted as it is incompatible with standard logic, and involves some revisionism in mathematics. Another reason could be that intuitionism is linked to Kantianism, idealism or phenomenology.17 Or there might simply be a complete lack of interest. None of these reasons are very convincing. 5. Final Remarks I have argued that in view of modern scientific developments, substance philosophy cannot really be regarded as a serious competitor for process philosophy. However, there is a new threat to process philosophy as mathematics has become increasingly important, and many people believe that mathematics is even more atemporal than substances. From an ontological point of view, one could defend neo-Pythagoreanism against process philosophy. From a conceptual point of view, the threat is even more imminent as the laws of nature (in physics) are all mathematical formulas, i.e. differential equations, in which time is merely a variable. Process philosophers cannot ignore the philosophical status of mathematics. I would like to ask Nicholas Rescher whether he shares my view, and how he would incorporate mathematics within process philosophy. I have sketched a few options. One such option is to accept that mathematics is a genuine problem for process philosophy, and subsequently to attempt to minimise the problem. Another is a head-on attack on mathematics, which is not very credible. One could take a naturalist-holistic stance, and claim, pace the received view, that mathematics and its concepts evolve over time. Intuitionism seems a very natural way out, but perhaps it involves problems I have overlooked. 17

Henry & Valenza suggest that Whitehead never engaged intuitionism “probably because of its Kantian roots”, see Henry & Valenza 1991, p. 21.

110

References Brouwer, L.E.J. 1975. Collected Works. Volume 1. Edited by A. Heyting (Amsterdam, North-Holland). Burgess, John & Rosen, Gideon. 1997. A Subject with No Object (Oxford, Clarendon). Decock, Lieven. 2001. “Between the abstract and the concrete,” in T. Derksen (Ed.). Moving Ahead: Philosophy of Mind and Realism (Oisterwijk, Dutch University Press), 139-154. Decock, Lieven. 2002a. Trading Ontology for Ideology. The Interplay of Logic, Set Theory and Semantics in Quine’s Philosophy (Dordrecht, Kluwer). Decock, Lieven. 2002b. “Quine’s weak and strong indispensability argument,” Journal for the General Philosophy of Science, Volume 33, pp. 231-250. Dirac, Paul. 1938. “The relation between mathematics and physics,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 59, 122-129. Dupré, John. 1993. The Disorder of Things (Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press). Feynman, Richard. 1965. The Character of Physical Law (Cambridge Mass., MIT Press). Field, Hartry. 1980. Science without Numbers (Oxford, Blackwell). Goodman, Nelson & Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1947. “Steps toward a constructive nominalism,” in: Nelson Goodman, Problems and Projects (Indianapolis/New York, Bobbs-Merrill), 1972, 325-333. Gunter, Pete. 1999. “Bergson, mathematics and creativity,” Process Studies, 28, 268288. Hartshorne, Charles. 1970. Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method (La Salle, Open Court). Henry, Granville & Valenza, Robert. 1993. “Whitehead’s early philosophy of mathematics,” Process Studies, 22, 21-36. Henry, Granville & Valenza, Robert. 2001. “Eternal objects at sea,” Process Studies, 30, 36-54. Kant, Immanuel. 1933. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by N.K. Smith (Hampshire, MacMillan). Maddy, Penelope. 1997. Naturalism in Mathematics (Oxford, Clarendon). Prigogine, Ilya & Stengers, Isabelle. 1984. Order Out of Chaos. Foreword by Alvin Toffler (London, Heinemann). Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1976a. “Whither physical objects?,” in: R. Cohen et al. (eds.), Essays in Memory of Imre Lakatos (Dordrecht, Reidel), 497-504. Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1976b. The Ways of Paradox (Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press).

111 Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1979. “Facts of the matter,” in: R. Shahan & C. Swoyer (eds.), Essays on the Philosophy of W.V. Quine (Hassocks, Harvester Press), 155-169. Van Atten, Mark. 2003. “Brouwer, as never read by Husserl,” Synthese, 137, 3-19. Van Brakel, Jaap. 2000. Philosophy of Chemistry (Leuven, Leuven University Press). Whitehead, Alfred North. 1919. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Whitehead, Alfred North. 1957. The Concept of Nature (Ann Arbor). Whitehead, Alfred North. 1978. Process and Reality. Corrected edition edited by David Griffin & Donald Sherburne (New York, Free Press).

III. PROCESS AND PARTICULARS Johanna Seibt (Aarhus)

Abstract Despite Rescher’s attempt to leave substance-ontology behind, Rescherian “processes” strongly resemble the “classical individuals” of the substance-ontological tradition— they are concrete, countable, particular and determinate entities. For this reason the suggested process-based approach to an ontological account of things shares crucial shortcomings of its substance-ontological rivals. In particular, I question, first, Rescher’s claim that a process-based bundle theory of things can avoid the necessitarian commitments of a traditional, Leibnizian bundle theory. Second, I argue that the suggested account of persistence is subject to the decisive objection against traditional “perdurance” accounts since it cannot make sense of transtemporal identity statements without changing their inferential role of identity statements. That processontology has other options I show by contrasting Rescher’s particularist scheme with “general process theory’, a new process ontology that tries to stay clear of substanceontological presuppositions. General processes are “dynamic stuffs,” combining categorial features of activities and stuffs: they are concrete yet non-particular, determinable individuals. In conclusion I sketch the so-called “recurrence account of persistence” that has been developed within the framework of general process theory to support my thesis that a process theory is better off without “classical” individuals.

1. The Substance Paradigm Rescher’s eloquent, enticing introduction to process metaphysics fills a genuine lacuna in recent writing on process philosophy. It is an introduction to a stance or “point of view,” not to an author, and whereas current process thought in analytical philosophy occurs largely within the confines of a specific philosophical discipline, Rescher leaves his

114 characteristic signature and presents the outline of a system.1 In this outline chapter 3 plays a pivotal function. Process thought, Rescher stresses, centers on claims about the primacy or priority of processes, holding that “physical existence is at bottom processual; that processes rather than things best represent the phenomena that we encounter in the natural world about us”(PM 2). Process metaphysics is “a point of view taking the line that one must prioritize processes over things and activities over substances” (PM 35). Thus, if anywhere, it is within the domain of ontology where process thought must prove itself; it is with regard to the ontological analysis of things where processism must offer explanatory advantages that can recommend it as a preferable alternative to the pervasive “tendency toward substance.”2 Much can be gained for a concrete project in process ontology, I believe, if we follow the methodological advice of tracing “the error [of a rival theory] back to its roots, and show why those who defend it have been led to speak as they do.”3 Setting out with the observation that, as a matter of historical fact, “the mainstream philosophical tradition of the European West has been characterized by the dominance of […] substance ontology”(PM 51), we need to investigate why substance ontology has taken centerstage in ontological research from Aristotle onwards to the present day. Interestingly, it appears that the notion of ‘substance’ itself has such a wide range in extension and intension that it cannot be used to formulate a suitable comprehension property for the class of approaches commonly cited as examples for a ‘substance ontology’—there is “no substance to ‘substance.’”4 Moreover, as Rescher’s contrastive tables display (PM 31, 35, 37), many of the characteristics of the research perspective labelled ‘substance ontology’ are independent of the notion of substance. A promising route to a sufficiently unified and sufficiently flexible characterization of ‘substance ontology’ surfaces, I think, if we take note of the following three facts:

1

In many places Rescher’s treatment of the issue goes beyond reporting extant ideas. Unfortunately, this might not become sufficiently clear to newcomers to process thought, due to Rescher’s decision for a more readable style and against the more scholarly format where exposition is clearly set off from original exploration.

2

G.W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, part III, section 2, ch. 1.

3

Cf. Sellars 1965: 282.

4

Cf. Stegmaier 1977: 34.

115 (a) Aristotle’s investigation into ‘ousia’ connects this term with a large number of category features: that ‘which primarily is’ is said to be to be an individual ‘this’, the locus of change, identical through time and change, countable or one of its kind, particular, an instance of properties but non-instantiable, independent, discrete, simple, unified, actual.5 (b) As such this list of features creates a functional overdetermination of the category ‘ousia’. The history of ‘substance ontology’ can be reconstructed as a sustained effort to continue the Aristotelian experiment by associating the notion of ‘substance’ with maximal consistent subsets of the original feature list. (c) The Aristotelian list of category features contains and entails a number of fundamental assumptions about ontological theory construction, primarily about possible linkages between category features (such as: individuality, particularity, concreteness, determinateness always go together.). These assumptions can be shown to operate in traditional substanceontological schemes no matter which notion of substance is championed; even though the historical notions of ‘substance’ diverge profoundly, substance ontologists share a large number of substantial theoretical presuppositions.6 Once we understand ‘substance ontology’ not merely as an endorsement of ‘substances’ but more generally as a network of principles legitimising certain types of research strategies, two conclusions become apparent. First, the network of ‘substance-ontological’ presuppositions fulfils the formal criteria of a Kuhnian research paradigm. Second, in order to leave ‘substance ontology’ behind, one must abandon most or all of these presuppositions. 5

Cf. Aristotle Metaphysics 1042a34, Physics 200b33, Metaphysics 1038b35f, ibid. 1017b16ff, Categories 2a13ff, Metaphysics 1037b1ff, Categories 3b33, Metaphysics 1041a4f, and ibd. 1041b11ff, respectively. Note that I do not mean to suggest that Aristotle at any time endorsed a notion of substance with all of these features.

6

For detailed arguments supporting these claims and a list of the (about 20) presuppositions that can be shown to steer ontological research—even current interpretations of quantumfield-theoretic notions—cf. the author’s 1990b, 1995, 1996a, c, 1999, 2000, 2004.

116 Contemporary so-called ‘revisionary’ ontologies indeed reject, explicitly or implicitly, at least one of the presuppositions of the substance paradigm. Trope ontology, for example, championing ‘abstract property particulars,’ does away with the presuppositions that all and only particular entities are logical subjects, and that all and only particular entities are concrete. Event ontologies typically give up on the traditional category dualism of a ‘this-factor’ (substance, object) and a ‘such-factor’ (attribute, property), and sometimes on the principle that all changes are changes in objects. Whitehead’s philosophy of organism relinquishes, among a host of others, the substance-ontological presupposition that all and only individuals are determinate entities, allowing for individuals to be ‘in the making.’ In fact, process ontologies in general can be shown to deviate farthest from the substance paradigm by renouncing the largest number of substance-ontological presuppositions. However, none of the classical process-ontological positions takes the decisive step of giving up on what I consider the core intuition of the substance paradigm, namely, the principle that all and only individuals are particulars. Rescher follows this process-ontological tradition and takes processes to be particulars, i.e., items that are themselves not multiply occurrent but necessarily occur in one (more or less well-defined) spatiotemporal location. But it is questionable, in my view, whether process ontology indeed has superior explanatory force vis-à-vis the traditional problems in ontology as long as the particularism of the substance paradigm is preserved. While I agree with Rescher that process ontology “manages to avert a whole list of avoidable philosophical difficulties” (PM 52) this is best achieved, I believe, if processes are understood as individuals very much unlike the concrete, particular individuals of the substance-ontological tradition. This is the main thesis I shall argue for in the following. If my reconstruction of Rescher’s sketch of a processontological analysis of things is correct, then the latter re-encounters a good part of the traditional ‘problem of persistence.’ That processontology has other options I show by contrasting Rescher’s particularist approach with ‘general process theory’, a scheme based on non-particular individuals. 2. Rescher's Particularist Notion of Process Chapter 3 aims to establish the claim that a process-ontological analysis of things as “processual complexes possessing a functional unity” provides us with an effective way to account for the numerical identity and

117 transtemporal sameness of common sense things. In order to understand the suggested solution, however, we need to understand more precisely (a) the category features and (b) the identity conditions of “processes” in Rescher’s sense of the term (hereafter briefly ‘R-processes’). (a) An R-process is an “organized family of occurrences that are systematically linked to one another either causally or functionally” (PM 38), “an integrated series of connected developments” (PM 38). Passages like these are ambiguous with regard to the type-token distinction. An integrated series of connected developments might be either this particular complex development or else a type/sort/kind of development. There are numerous passages that suggest a reading of R-processes as concrete particulars, as unrepeatable entities that are, but do not have, instances. For instance, R-processes are said to be “coordinated group of changes” (PM 38); to “have a structure of patterns and periodicities” (PM 71), to be something which “not only instantiates its processual structure but has it” (PM 72). Again, in connection with specific applications Rescher claims that two typings of ‘AND’ are “two concrete processes [which are] instances of the same generic production procedure” (PM 40) and that a person is a collectivity of processes that is the “unique instance of [a] particular life history” (PM 73). On the other hand, there is also sufficient textual evidence to suggest that R-processes are types. Rescher states, for instance, that “a particular process is (by hypothesis) a fixed sort of eventuation sequence” (PM 40, my emphasis), that “structural identity of operation is the crux” when determining what should count as “instantiations of a generally identical process” (PM 40), that “the identity of a process is constituted through a sequential pattern of action” (PM 40f), and that “a process is made into the item it is […]by the temporal structure of its descriptive [sic] unfolding in time” (PM 40). It is not easy, thus, to get clear on the category features of Rprocesses—are they instances or structures instantiated? Are they particulars (tokens, unrepeatables, uniquely occurrent) or universals (types, repeatables, multiply occurrent)? They are said to both be instances and to have instantiations, to both be a sort of sequence or dynamic structure and to have such structures—in short, to be both tokens and types at once. This curious ‘amphiboly’ of the notion of an R-process is apparently unintended—it is indicative, in my view, of the fact that processes do not afford descriptions in the ‘grammar’ of traditional ontology operating with relational predicates like ‘x instantiates y’, ‘x has structure y’ etc. That processes indeed are apt to fulfil the logical functions of both so-called ‘tokens’ and ‘types’ I shall argue below; but it requires that we leave the

118 traditional idiom behind and characterize them as neither tokens nor types, particulars nor universals in the classical understanding of these terms. Only within a dialectical approach one could maintain that processes are both tokens and types, i.e., that they are, along the model of a Hegelian Begriff, tokens of themselves or their self-instantiatings. But this does not seem to be intended. Rather, Rescher writes that a “particular process represents a concrete universal” (PM 72) and expressly draws the difference between a process and the “process-type” it instantiates. Accordingly, I will hereafter proceed from the assumption that Rprocesses are supposed to be unrepeatable entities or particulars. (b) Questions also arise with regard to the identity conditions of Rprocesses themselves, basic and complex. If “processes always involve various events, and events exist only in and through processes” (PM 38; my emphasis) one wonders whether events are an additional category, whether this relation of mutual existential dependence between processes and events involves identity, and how it squares with the claim that “the identity of a process is constituted through a sequential pattern of action” (PM 40f). Perhaps we can glean the identity conditions of processes from the description of their identification which “involves two components: type specification [e.g., “a heat wave”] and coordinative spatio-temporal placement [“the heat wave that afflicted Atlanta last August”]” (PM 56). The identity condition for R-processes would then seem to run along the lines of (ID): (ID) For variables x and y ranging over R-processes, x and y are coreferential iff there is a predicate f for process-types such that f(x) ↔ f(y) and the spatio-temporal location of x is identical with the spatio-temporal location of y. Note that (ID) articulates a fine-grained (‘intensional’ or descriptiondependent) identity condition for R-processes, postulating that there are as many superposed processes in a certain spatio-temporal region as there are extensionally different type-specifications applicable to the occurrences in a certain area. (E.g., on the basis of (ID) the R-process that is the heatwave in Atlanta now could be said to be different from the R-process that satisfies the predicate ‘special weather conditions’ in Atlanta now). Contrast (ID) with the stronger condition (ID*) which yields an ‘extensionalist’ or description-independent notion of process: (ID*) For variables x and y ranging over R-processes, x and y are coreferential iff for all predicates for process-types f such that

119 f(x) ↔ f(y), and the spatio-temporal location of x is identical with the spatio-temporal location of y. If processists “tend to be realist about processes” (PM 58), one would expect that they would rather tend to uphold a difference between identifications conditions and identity conditions, i.e., that they would accept that a process a can be identified by tracing it under just one sortal predicate (‘a heatwave’) yet insist that a is something to which many noncoextensional sortal predicates apply. I suspect that (ID*) is the intended condition.7 (To be noted in passing, there is a tension between, on the one hand, (ID) and (ID*) on the other hand, Rescher’s criticism of Strawson’s transcendental argument for the primacy of material bodies. If “processes […] can serve to define and constitute the required spatio-temporal framework,” and if, in the full-scale processist setting Rescher suggests, processes indeed are taken to define and constitute the spatio-temporal framework, then the identity of processes should better not make reference to the identity of spatio-temporal locations.8) 3. Persisting Problems of Persistence Rescher’s book is intended as a readable, inspiring invitation to process thought and as such it naturally omits technicalities. This creates a certain

7

Note that section 3 of ch. 3, entitled “Ongoing identity is a matter of ongoing reidentifiability: an idealist perspective” does not help us to decide between (ID) and (ID*). In this section Rescher points out that process philosophers tend to be “idealist about substances” (58) in the sense that substances are “mere theory constructs” given that they “do not present themselves in experience as such but only via their processual impacts” (58). This claim sits badly with the thesis that “the unity of things is a unity of process” if we, first, take seriously the idea that “the unity of process is itself processual” (54) and, second, understand a complex of processes to be a complex process, a “super-ordinate process-unit” (54). For if one assumes that “processes are sufficient unto themselves and go along ‘doing their own thing’” (57) while “the very being and identity of things as the particulars they are consists in their status in a matrix of interaction [with a beholder]” (56) and is thus dependent or “of the ‘for another’ sort” (59), one cannot also assume that things are themselves complex processes—such complex processes would then have to be both self-sufficient and dependent on the existence of beholders.

8

As far as I can see, the only way to alleviate this tension is by incorporating a suitable ‘bootstrapping method’,e.g., by using a formal theory of circular definitions as developed in Gupta/Belnap 1993.

120 difficulty for the commentator who must ‘change the book’s speech act’ and extrapolate and supplement missing details in order to receive a proposal that can be concretely discussed. But while such reconstructive efforts harbour obvious dangers, I think they are unavoidable: in ontology the devil is in the detail. Let us thus assume, first, that the constituent “events” of an Rprocess are themselves R-processes governed by (ID) or (ID*). From a process-ontological view, Rescher claims, common sense things or, more generally, material objects, can be conceived of as “bundles of powers” (PM 53) whose unity is “processual or functional” (PM 52), a “unity of process” (PM 57). Such remarks suggest, second, that we conceive of the ontological make-up of a thing or material object along the lines of (DT): (DT) For any individual constant a, a satisfies the predicate ‘is a material object’ (‘is a thing’) just in case a denotes a complex R-process a which integrates constituent R-processes and instantiates process-type t. A bundle or complex of processes, this is the point of (DT), is a complex process. Note that the bundle-process a is a particular entity, as are its constituents b1…bn. Such a process-based or dynamic ‘bundle-account’ of things, Rescher maintains, has a variety of advantages. (Claim 1:) “The problem of how substances (things with their coordinate properties and relations) can act” is “sidestepped” by (DT) “through accepting processes as such from the outset.” (PM 52) (Claim 2:) Account (DT) refrains from “[endowing] things with the permanence of perduring substances, [and from] supposing that things remain self-identical through time on the basis of their possession of certain essential features or properties that remain changelessly intact across temporal changes” (PM 35). Thus (DT) averts the problem of specifying such a changeless substratum or essence. (Claim 3:) Since “the unity of process is itself processual” no “separate instrumentality of integration—process apart—is required to effect the information of processes” (PM 54). (Claim 4:) Since the “unity of a process is the unity of a lawful order that need not be fully determinative [but can be only] deliminative” (PM 39), definition (DT)—unlike other bundle

121 accounts—warrants that at least some of the true statements about things are contingent. If all of these claims could be vindicated, a definition along the lines of (DT) would qualify as the best available ontological analysis of material objects. So we should investigate in greater detail, whether an account based on (ID) or (ID*) and (DT) could in principle live up to such promises. Claim 3 is certainly unproblematic; one should note, though, that the type-theoretic advantage of having one type of entity functioning as both the ‘constitutor’ and the ‘constituents’ of a bundle, is not restricted to the process-ontological approach—‘thing bundles’ might equally well be a trope of tropes or a fact of facts. With claim (4), however, there are difficulties. Consider an acorn (call it ‘Alpha’) which fell onto the paved sidewalk last Monday evening; on Tuesday it got wet from rain and dried again, on Wednesday it is “eaten by a passing pig” (PM 40). According to (DT) Alpha consists of the complex process a which integrates constituent processes covering the spatio-temporal region during which Alpha is said to exist. The question to consider is whether a could possibly play the role of that ontological factor which constitutes (explains) the unity and (together with Alpha’s spatio-temporal location) the identity of Alpha. I shall call ontological factors with these explanatory functions the ‘unifier of Alpha’ and the ‘identity-ground of Alpha.’ According to claim 4 the unity of Alpha is constituted by some order that is at work in the process ‘being an acorn’ and determines the course of events only broadly, at the level of causal and functional relationships; it does not necessitate that Alpha falls onto soft soil and grows into a seedling but allows for a pig’s serendipity. In short, the unifier of Alpha does not entail the actual sequence of occurrences. But then the unifier of Alpha cannot be a, since a is the “eventuation sequence” of all that which actually happens to Alpha and does entail any of the , very much like a Leibnizian “individual concept.” How are we to combine (DT) with the idea that “identifiable processes generally have their ordinary course of programmatic development [which is yet] not inexorable” (PM 40) ? If each particular process is said to be “a fixed sort of eventuation sequence” (PM 40) and “the identity of a process is constituted through a sequential pattern of action” (PM 40f), how could one also claim that the “unity of a process” is merely “deliminative” ? Consider the following options, stated in terms of our example:

122 (A) The ‘bundle process’ a is the identity ground of Alpha but not the unifier of Alpha, which is a process g that is somehow realized by (emergent on) a. (B) The ‘bundle process’ a is neither the identity ground nor the unifier of Alpha; both of these functions are fulfilled by a process g that is somehow realized by (emergent on) a. I take it that a process g which is a not an inexorable “programmatic development” or “pattern of action” is realized by a process a only insofar and as long as a has constituent stages bi which instantiate process-types (and types of relational arrangements of processes) that are instantiated by stages of g. According to option (A) we should then say that the unifierprocess g of being an acorn is realized by a up until Monday evening; after that point in time Alpha is no longer unified, at least not by its being an acorn.9 According to option (B) we should say that the identity and unity of Alpha is warranted as long as a realizes the unifier-process and identity ground g, and that after Monday evening, when Alpha’s fate deviates from the normal course of developments for acorns, the identity and unity of Alpha is not grounded by anything, or at least not by its being an acorn. In any case, on either option we are committed to saying that Alpha ceases to be an acorn as soon as the actual eventuation sequence deviates from the “programmatic development” that acorns normally realize. This is certainly not a desirable outcome. That particulars of kind K should lose their unity (option A) or both unity and identity (option B) once their careers deviate from the normal developments of K’s is certainly not in agreement with our common ways of reasoning about particulars, which any ontological account of particulars should preserve. There are also good reasons to remain sceptical about the idea that a particularist notion of process and, in particular, an analysis of things along the lines of (DT) could make good on claims 1 and 2. Beginning 9

There is one passage where Rescher seems to favour option (A): “Process philosophy sees ‘things’ as processual complexes possessing a functional unity instead of as substances individuated by a qualitative nature of some sort. On such a view, physical particulars become concrete instantiations of processual structures” (PM 53). This can be read as stating that the actual eventuation sequence a instantiates the processual structure or process type of process g that is realized by a.

123 with claim 1, we should note that by “accepting processes from the outset” we do indeed gain a platform to address a number of important explanatory tasks, such as becoming, dynamic continuity, causation, teleological purposiveness, and mind-body interaction (cf. PM 52, 54). But these are explanatory tasks connected with the nature of change and types of changes; in order to explain “how substances (things with their coordinate properties and relations) can act” (first emphasis supplied) more must be done than just to accept processes from the outset. According to claim 1 it should be straightforward to specify with (DT) truth-makers for sentences about changes in things such as: [1] On Monday evening Alpha fell. [2] On Tuesday Alpha was first dry, then wet, and then dry again. [3] On Wednesday Alpha was eaten. The envisaged ontological descriptions of truth-makers for [1] through [3], respectively, would probably be: [a] a integrates a stage which is an instantiation of the process-type falling that occurs at spatio-temporal location L1. [b] a integrates stages bi and bj, where bi is an instantiation of the process-type getting wet which occurs at spatio-temporal location L2 and bj is an instantiation of the process type getting dry which occurs at spatio-temporal location L3. [c] the last stage of a is a process which is an instantiation of the process-type being eaten that occurs at spatio-temporal location L4. Analyses [a] through [c] are strongly reminiscent of the so-called “perdurance account” of change and persistence, which typically conceives of things as “[existing] in time in the way in which a road exists in space— some parts of it are here, some parts of it are there.”10

10

Cf. Lewis 1986: 202. Note that the distinction between endurance and perdurance was first formulated in Mark Johnston’s dissertation (Princeton 1984).

124 (Perdurance) A thing is a filled four-dimensional (spatiotemporal) region with temporal parts are concatenated by the relation G (‘genidentity’).11 Definition (DT) certainly has one decisive advantage over (Perdurance) in that it operates with dynamic constituents “capable of sliding into another” (PM 53) and thus does not have to explain how a ‘causal message can be communicated across the gap’ between the discrete temporal parts of a four-dimensional whole.12 Moreover, in taking a thing to be composed of changes rather than of non-changing states, (DT) can escape the consequence that the temporal parts of a thing of kind K are both instantaneous and of kind K, which is, in my view, an absurdity that by itself suffices to unhinge the perdurance account of alterations.13 However, to its detriment, (DT) joins the perdurance account in associating the thing that is said to change with a four-dimensional entity (a) the identity of which is determined by the sequence of its constituent stages up to a certain point in time, . Assume we refer to Alpha on Monday evening just after it has fallen and once again on Tuesday evening. What we refer to on Monday evening is the eventuation sequence a = , where bi is an instantiation of falling which occurs on Monday evening; what we refer to on Tuesday evening is a different eventuation sequence a = , containing instantiations of getting wet and drying. The two eventuation sequences overlap, but they are different. This again clashes with our common ways of reasoning about things; when we talk about a thing on two different occasions we take ourselves to be referring to one and the same entity, not to two overlapping ones. Since our common ways of reasoning about change in things are the very data for an ontological theory of changes in things, such a clash cannot be lightly accepted. Rescher clearly intends to avoid it: But how can a process preserve its own self-identity in the face of alteration—how can it be one particular item and yet change? The answer lies in a single factor: internal complexity. A process does not change as such—as the particular process at issue—but any such process can incorporate change through its unifying amalgamation of stages or phases (which may themselves be processes). Even as a

11

For extensive discussions of perdurance cf. Sider 2001, Hawley 2002.

12

Cf. Haslanger 1989: 13.

13

Cf. Seibt 1996c.

125 story can encompass foolishness without itself being foolish, so a process can encompass changes without itself changing (PM 39). But the only way to ensure that the name ‘Alpha’ used on different occasions refers to one and the same self-identical four-dimensional process-whole is by adopting a “block universe” and the principle that the name “Alpha” used at any time refers consistently to the complete eventuation sequence a, representing the entire career of Alpha. Precisely this move, however, goes against a basic intuition of classical process metaphysics that Rescher seems to share (cf. PM 40), namely, that the ontological description of the world should not assume a ‘God’s eye point of view’ for which all is ‘ready-made’ without novelties and ‘emergent’ state of affairs. A closely related difficulty surfaces with respect to claim 2 which recommends (DT) for the ontological interpretation for statements about the persistence of things, such as [1], [2] or more expressly: [4] Alpha withstood rain and sunshine on Tuesday; [5] The dry acorn that is lying on the pavement now is the same as the wet acorn that was lying there this morning. If we are able to free ourselves from the supposition “that things remain self-identical through time on the basis of their possession of certain essential features or properties that remain changelessly intact across temporal changes,” then, Rescher claims, we can rid ourselves of the problem of having “to specify any such change-exempt descriptive properties or nonclassificatory features that stably characterize the essence of things” (PM 35). The question remains, however, precisely how an account along the lines of (DT) could be used to draft suitable truth-makers for [4] or [5]. For statement [4] we might simply point to analysis [b] above (note, however, that this reading can only be applied to statements about the persistence of Alpha through past changes). But, again, without adopting a ‘block universe’ the proponent of (DT) cannot properly accommodate a statement like [5], which explicitly affirms the transtemporal sameness of the referent of ‘Alpha.’ Without block universe the relational expression ‘is the same as’ must be taken to denote a relation of inclusion (or overlap) rather than identity. 4. Non-Particular Processes and the Recurrence View of Persistence But we do utter statements like [5], and affirmations of transtemporal sameness clearly have the inferential import of identity statements—what

126 stands in the relation of sameness across time and change is to be counted as one entity, not as two entities, with one included in the other. Contemporary proponents of substance, and, specifically, proponents of the so-called “endurance” account of persistence, insist—correctly in my view—that the idiom of transtemporal ‘sameness’ presents a datum of incontrovertible significance. Generally speaking, the task of an ontological account of entities fulfilling a predicate ‘F(—)’ (e.g., ‘is a person,’ ‘is concrete,’ ‘persists,’ ‘is an individual’) is to specify truthmakers for a class of statements S that are taken to be about these entities, in such a way that the characteristics of the entities constituting the truthmaker for any s in S explain or justify the inferences we draw from s. In particular, then, statements about persistence with the inferential role of identity statements should be justified in terms of entities that are identical throughout time and change. If endurantists proclaim that a thing O exists in time in such a way that “all of O is here” at any time at which O exists, they are on the right track. On the other hand, they are wrong in taking this claim to entail that an enduring entity cannot be a four-dimensional entity; as shall presently become clear, such a conclusion follows only if one endorses the particularism of the substance paradigm. Conversely, perdurantists are right in holding that assertions about change or transtemporal difference cannot be assertions about an entity which is transtemporally identical.14 But they go astray when they conclude that the entity said to change is not transtemporally identical but a relational complex; again, such a conclusion follows only if one endorses the particularism of the substance paradigm. The key to a solution to the problem of persistence lies in rejecting the most central presupposition that endurantists, perdurantists, and even the classical process-ontological stance Rescher is rebuilding, share, namely, the presupposition that the world is an assembly of countable particulars.

14

If transtemporal sameness is taken to be identity and thus governed by the Leibniz Law, i.e., if it entails ‘indiscernibility’ with respect to all features, change cannot be a difference in features. On PM 64f. Rescher refers to a more elaborate version of this argument discussed in Seibt 1990b: 313f. The reader should note that various contributors to the contemporary about persistence address this difficulty, and that the ‘aporia of transtemporal identity’ stated in my dissertation is merely a detailed reconstruction of a well-known puzzle.

127 As long as we presume that the ontological counterparts of our talk about things are countable particulars, the following holds as a strict or exclusive alternative: (IH) If entity O exists at a (spatial or temporal) location L, either O is at L with all of its parts (all of O exists at L) or else O exists at L by having a (spatial or temporal) part which exists at L. Read for temporal parts, this alternative is representative of the choice between endurance and perdurance. In order to gain significantly new solution strategies for the problem of persistence we need to move beyond the substance paradigm and realize that there are non-countable, nonparticular individuals that do not fulfil (IH), and that processes are best categorised as individuals of this sort. 5. Two Paths for Process Ontology Let me sketch the gist of a process-ontological explanation of the identity and unity of things that operates with a non-particularist notion of process.15 Observing that “Heraclitus was only half right: We indeed do not step twice into the same waters, but we can certainly step twice into the same river” (PM 52f) Rescher suggests that the transtemporal sameness of a countable particular entity such as a river “consists in what it does” (PM 53). However, precisely at this point we must go further and ask in which sense ‘what the river does’ is the same over time. Assuming that ‘what the river does’ is flowing, in which sense is the flowing then (or at t) the same as the flowing now (at t’)? Flowing is an activity. We use the term ‘activity’ rather broadly to denote occurrences that are either (a) acts done by an agent (reading, running, rolling) or afflictions of a medium (flowing, bubbling, blowing); or (b) occurrences which are neither acts of an agent nor afflictions of a medium and thus are denoted by sentences with ‘dummy’ subjects (cf. ‘it is raining,’ ‘the fire is burning,’ ‘electromagnetic radiation is travelling through empty space’). Activities logically behave very much like stuffs— they take ‘mass quantifiers’ (‘much’, ‘little’), are as such ‘unbounded’ and

15

Detailed expositions can be found in Seibt 1990b, 1995, 1996c, 1999, 2000b, 2001, and, in particular, 2002b.

128 need to be ‘packaged’ into amounts to be countable (‘an hour of running’). Most importantly, they are ‘homomerous’ or like-parted16: (H) An entity E is (spatially / temporally) homomerous iff it holds for all (spatial / temporal) parts r of the (spatial / temporal) region occupied by E, if the size of r is greater than G, then E exists in r.17 Almost any spatial part of a region occupied by water is something of which we can truly predicate ‘x is water’; almost any (spatial or temporal) part of a region for which ‘it is snowing’ is true is again a region for which ‘it is snowing’ is true. Activities of type (b), i.e., ‘subjectless’ activities, and some type (a) activities, are homomerous in space and time; all activities are homomerous in time. Homeomerity in time is the technical expression for what one might call more intuitively the ‘dynamic shape’ of activities i.e., the fact that activities, unlike developments, are dynamically fairly uniform, without culmination point, and frequently repetitive. Homeomerity comes in degrees—if G is small, E is highly homomerous, if G necessarily coincides with r, if r is the smallest size in which E can occur, then E is minimally homomerous. The fact that activities are homomerous in time immediately opens up a new avenue for the ontological interpretation of assertions about sameness through time and change as in statement [5] above. I call this approach the ‘recurrence view’ of persistence. Obviously principle (IH) and the mereological alternative “all of it is here” vs. “part of it is here” that drives the endurance-perdurance opposition does not apply to a highly homomerous entity where—coarsely speaking—‘all of it is in (nearly) all of its parts.’ Assuming I step into the Allegheny River on Tuesday and once again on Wednesday, we can easily say that the flowing which I step into on Wednesday is identical with the flowing I stepped into on Tuesday—what is stepped into on both occasions is one and the same activity p which occurs along the entire spatio-temporal extension R of the

16

The affinities between the logical role of expressions for activities and stuffs are better known to linguists than to philosophers, cf. recent contributions to the debate about ‘Aktionsarten’ and verbal aspect.

17

G is the ‘grain size’ of E’s homeomoerity and it varies for entities of different kinds. For water it may be the spatial size of several molecules, for smoking it may be the spatial size of an adult human being and, following Bill Clinton’s famous argument, the temporal size of a typical inhalation.

129 Allegheny and in (almost) each of the temporal parts of R. The activity p is fairly specific—the way the Allegheny flows (along its entire spatiotemporal extension) is different from the way the Hudson flows (along its entire spatiotemporal extension). It is an activity more specific than just flowing as it occurs in any river. Yet, it is less specific than the turbulent-flowing that was the way of the Allegheny’s flowing on Tuesday after heavy rain, or the calm-flowing that was the way of the Allegheny’s flowing on Wednesday. In sum, a river can be said to persist through time and change because it can be identified with a fairly specific activity which recurs in time just like a stuff recurs in space. Activities can recur in time in the literal and direct sense indicated by (H) because they are not individuated in terms of the spatio-temporal region they occupy (cf. (ID and ID* above). Rather, activities are individuated in terms of their functional components. This can be rather straightforwardly stated once one realizes that in application to activities the parthood relation does not coincide with the piecehood relation formalised by classical mereology but indicates that some activities ‘contribute to the occurrence’ of others.18 So activities are identical just in case they share all their parts: (ID-GPT) For all variables x, y, and z ranging over activities, x and y are coreferential iff for all values of z, if it holds that z is part of x then and only then z is part of y. The general ‘contribution’ expressed by ‘is part of’ can be diversified into the more familiar notions of functional, material, spatial, and temporal parthood and used to define a host of more complex relationships. For present purposes the notion of ‘specification’ is of particular interest: an activity a specifies an activity b iff any part of b is also part of a. Waltzing is a specification of dancing, but so is street dancing or midnight dancing or dancing-with-Paul. The specification relation allows us to come 18

That classical mereology has focused on the part-relation holding among bounded, countable particulars can count as another instance of theory construction under the spell of the substance paradigm. So far it has gone almost unnoticed that the expressions ‘part’ in ‘Breathing is part of singing’ and ‘This stick is a part of my broom’ represent different logical relationships. In particular, unlike the ‘is a part (piece) of’ relation, ‘is part of’ is not transitive. This has a number of welcome implications. With a non-transitive part-relation, for instance, it is particularly straightforward to analyze various types of the ‘emergence’ of functional features in complex units; for sketches and expositions of a non-standard mereology on actitivities cf. the references in footnote 14.

130 to grips with all three tasks a satisfactory theory of persistence should fulfil, as I shall briefly indicate. First, such a theory should take seriously the idiom of transtemporal sameness as in statements [4] and [5], and interpret such talk as expressing identity. This task is the obvious weakness of the perdurance view and the sales pitch for the endurance view; as I just adumbrated, it is a task that is also straightforwardly fulfilled by the recurrence view. Second, consider statements [6] and [7] which assert that two phenomenally different entities are somehow ‘connected’ across time or to be counted as one across time, respectively. [6] The acorn you planted 30 years ago grew into this big tree. [7] The clear stream I swam in 30 years ago and this muddy run are one river. A theory of persistence must also be able to explicate truthmakers for statements like these focusing on transtemporal continuity or on transtemporal unity (oneness). This is where the perdurance view, prima facie, has its strength—transtemporal continuity is spelled out in terms of a relation of “genidentity” holding between the temporal parts of a temporally extended entity, and the transtemporal unity or oneness of the latter is grounded in the countable oneness of the bounded spatiotemporal region occupied. Similarly, prima facie the perdurance view also excels vis-à-vis the third task, namely, to account for statements about change, such as [2] above or [8] The way the river then was so different from way the river is now. [9] The river then and the river now are just not the same. Tasks two and three present serious challenges for an endurance view.19 The recurrence view, on the other hand, insists that we distinguish between the logical subjects of statements about transtemporal sameness, continuity, unity, change. As ‘dynamic stuffs’ activities differ from their quantities and their portions, akin to the difference between water (stuff), a puddle of water (quantity), and this puddle of water (portion). These differences can be treated as differences in the specificity of the activity in question: [a] the activity p0 of flowing-somewhere-sometime 19

Cf. Seibt 1996c.

131 [b] the activity p1 of flowing-N-ly-somewhere-sometime [c] the activity p2 of flowing-N-ly-in-a-bounded-and connected-spacetime-region- of extent-E [d] the activity p3 of flowing-N-ly-in-a-bounded-andconnected-spacetime-region-R- of-extent-E. The claim that one can step into the same river twice is about an activity which is as generic or indeterminate as in [b]. A statement like [7] is about p2, a more specific activity which is the composition product of a fairly specific flowing and an unspecified spatiotemporal location.20 Unlike p0 and p1, p2 is a countable entity (but not a particular—what we count are units for which it must precisely be possible to occur in several locations at once). Uniqueness of spatial occurrence enters only at the level of specificity of [d] where specific spatiotemporal locations are mentioned (but still we do not have particularity, if particulars are taken to be necessarily uniquely located or non-recurrent). Here we have an activity with minimal homeomerity: the smallest spatiotemporal region in which p3 can occur is R itself. Thus p3 is not recurrent and the same holds for the co-specific component activities of p3 in spatiotemporal parts of R. Statements such as [8] or [9] which assert that a certain entity exhibits different features at different times involve such a level of specificity; as the perdurantist rightly stresses, in comparing ‘the river then’ with ‘the river now’ we refer to different ‘temporal parts’ or non-recurrent highly specific activities. The fact that activities [a] through [d] are successive specifications explains why we so easily change from a focus on sameness, to a focus on continuity, to a focus on difference across time (and vice versa), or even can combine these three evaluative perspectives in a statement like: [10] One and the same river flows differently at different times. The only way, I believe, to relieve [10] of its air of paradox and to devise a coherent yet ‘non-deflationary’ interpretation of the sameness and difference mentioned in [10], is by noticing that, according to its inferential role, [10] is a statement about three activities standing in a relationship of 20

Within an ontology that is geared to both the ‘manifest’ and the ‘scientific image’ spacetime itself can be considered as an activity, with spatiotemporal locations being specifications of this activity.

132 specification. Insofar as Heraclitus had a highly specific, non-recurrent activity such as [d] in mind, he was more than half right: this flowing is a river in which we cannot step twice. But, in line with Rescher’s remark above, Heraclitus overlooked the possibility that judgements about ‘the same river’ might be made true by recurrent generic activities such as [b]. Coarsely put, we cannot step into the same waters, but into the same ‘water under the bridge.’

6. Conclusion Acorns are much like rivers. More precisely, they are like rivers if we do not, from the outset, take them to be particulars but rather consider them an assembly of more or less specific activities or ‘dynamic stuffs’, some of which fulfil contingently the condition of unique location or nonrecurrence that is essential for classical particulars. To model the inferential space of the notion ‘thing’ or ‘material object’ we need to adopt an ontology of dynamic individuals none of which strictly speaking is a particular—it just happens that some of them are infimae species and behave sufficiently like particulars. What I have said in the previous section about the persistence of activities can, I hope, give a preliminary idea about an activity-based account of the persistence of things. But, to restate, in ontology the devil is in the detail, and for these I must refer the reader to the theory of “general processes,” a mereological scheme with subjectless activities as basic entities.21 My main purpose here was to draw attention to two different notions of process. R-processes are “concrete instantiations of processual structures” which are unrepeatable entities or classical particulars. The scheme based on R-processes retains the type-token distinction and an unanalysed instantiation relation. General processes on the other hand are non-countable (stufflike), concrete, general, dynamic individuals. This combination of category features requires a wholesale rejection of the substance paradigm and it is, I believe, new in ontology.22 The most 21

Cf. references in fn. 14. A definition of things can be found in Seibt 1999, 2000b, 2002b.

22

Obvious cognates of general processes—earlier labeled ‘dynamic masses’—are C. D. Broad’s “subjectless processes”; these are countable particulars, however. W.

133 striking feature of general processes might be that they are more or less generic or indeterminate individuals. To admit of generic individuals, to admit that the actual world (and not only possible worlds) is inhabited by indeterminate individuals, goes right against the deep-seated conviction that concreteness, particularity, individuality, and full determinateness always go hand in hand.23 In the theory of general processes the traditional distinction between particular and universal entities is replaced by a gradient scale of specificity of concrete general entities. General processes are ‘general’ in the sense that they are ‘possibly multiply occurrent in space and time’ (even if they are contingently uniquely located) yet they are concrete in the sense that they as such occur within space and time (not in the indirect sense of having instantiations or being exemplified). The notion of a general process thus contains a ‘built-in’ solution to the problem of universals.24 ‘R-processes’ and ‘general processes’ represent two different methodological strategies. The first strategy keeps the categoreal defaults set by the substance paradigm and operates with concrete, countable, particular individuals as basic entities, but insists that processes are fit to play the role of such basic entities. The second strategy focuses on processes without traditional categorial preconceptions and rather derives the category features of basic entities from the way we reason about processes. Whether I am right in ascribing to Rescher the first strategy and a commitment to R-processes, whether the theory of general processes is the right way to implement the second strategy, and, most of all, whether the second strategy suits the aims of a processist system—aims which probably no living philosopher can see as clearly as Rescher—is a matter of philosophical inquiry, “the stuff of living thought.” (PM 171).

Sellars’ Carus Lectures (Sellars 1981) are best read by putting his “pure processes” in close vicinity to general processes, or so I argue in 2000a. Cf. also Zemach 1970, where it is argued that concrete entities which are “continuants” in space and time, called “types”, can well qualify as individuals. 23

This presupposition is often linked with the idea that concrete entities have infinite determinateness and are “cognitively inexhaustible” for human minds who are only capable of producing finite descriptions (cf. Rescher 1999). But the ontological and the epistemological perspective can be separated—that individuals are indeterminate in some respects does not make them cognitively fully accessible in all or even any of their determinate respects.

24

Rubinstein (1997) repeats the solution to the problem of universals sketched in Seibt 1990b—well-known to him—but, strangely, fails to give any reference.

134

References Gupta, A. /Belnap, N. 1993 A Revision Theory of Truth, Cambridge: MIT Press. Haslanger, S. 1989 “Persistence, Change, and Explanation,” Philosophical Studies 56, 1-28. Hawley, K. 2002 How Things Persist, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lewis, D., 1986 On the Plurality of Worlds, Oxford: Blackwell. Rescher, N. 1999 “How Many Possible Worlds Are There?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research59, 403-420. Rubinstein, E. 1997 “Absolute Processes: A Nominalist Alternative,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 35, 539-555. Sellars, W. 1965 “Particulars,” in: Science, Perception, and Reality (Springfield: Thomas), 282-297. Seibt, J. 1990a Properties as Processes. A Synpotic Study in Wilfrid Sellars' Nominalism, (Reseda: Ridgeview Pub. Co.). Seibt, J. 1990b Towards Process Ontology: A Critical Study in Substance-Ontological Premises. Ph. D. Dissertation Pittsburgh: UMI-Dissertation Publication. Seibt, J. 1995 “Individuen als Prozesse: Zur prozess-ontologischen Revision des Substanzparadigmas,” Logos 2, 352-384. Seibt, J. 1996a “Non-countable Individuals: Why One and the Same Is Not One and the Same,” Southwest Philosophy Review 12, 225-237. Seibt, J. 1996b “The Myth of Substance and the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness,” Acta Analytica 15. Seibt, J. 1996c “Existence in Time: From Substance to Process,” in: Perspectives on Time. Boston Studies in Philosophy of Science, ed. by J. Faye/U. Scheffler/M. Urs, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 143-182. Seibt, J. 1999 “Dinge als Prozesse,” in: R. Hüntelmann/E. Tegtmeier (eds.), Neue Ontologie und Neue Metaphysik, Köln: Academia Verlag, 11-41. Seibt, J. 2000a “Pure Processes and Projective Metaphysics,” Philosophical Studies, 101, 253-289. Seibt, J. 2000b “The Dynamic Constitution of Things,” in: Faye, J. et al. (eds.), Facts and Events. Poznan Studies in Philosophy of Science 72, 241-278. Seibt, J. 2001 “Formal Process Ontology,” in: Formal Ontology in Information Systems: Collected papers from the second international conference, : ed. by Welty, C. and Smith, B., Ogunquit: ACM Press, 333-345. Seibt, J. 2002a “Quanta, Tropes, or Processes: On Ontologies for QFT beyond the Myth of Substance,” in: Kuhlmann, M. et. al., (eds.) The Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Field Theory, forthcoming. Seibt, J. 2004 General process Theory. A Study in Ontological Revision, Habilitationsschrift, University of Konstanz, forthcoming. Sider, T. 2001 Fourdimensionalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stegmaier, W. 1977 Substanz—Grundbegriff der Metaphysik, Stuttgart: Fromann Holzboog. Zemach, E. 1970 “Four Ontologies,” Journal of Philosophy 23, 231-247.

IV. PROCESS AND UNIVERSALS George W. Shields (Kentucky State)

Abstract The previous chapter on process and particulars naturally invites an exploration of the problem of universals, which Rescher rightly deems “one of the perennial key issues of metaphysics” (PM 69). The chapter on universals is organized into three sections: The first section defines the problem of universals, articulates three major classical theoretical responses to the problem, and articulates ways in which process metaphysics can provide a realistic approach to universals that is economical and free from the difficulties of a realistic substance metaphysics. The second section explores the central role of novelty and creativity in a process approach to universals. Finally, a third section treats the issue of “taxonomic complexification” and how it is affected by the adoption of process metaphysics. The plan of this essay is to provide a succinct, critical exposition of each of the above sections of “Process and Universals”; this will be followed by an exploration of several questions raised by Rescher’s omission of any treatment here of Whitehead’s doctrine of eternal objects.

The previous chapter on process and particulars naturally invites an exploration of the problem of universals, which Rescher rightly deems “one of the perennial key issues of metaphysics” (PM 69). The chapter on universals is organized into three sections: The first section defines the problem of universals, articulates three major classical theoretical responses to the problem, and articulates ways in which process metaphysics can provide a realistic approach to universals that is economical and free from the difficulties of a realistic substance metaphysics. The second section explores the central role of novelty and creativity in a process approach to universals. Finally, a third section treats the issue of “taxonomic complexification” and how it is affected by the

136 adoption of process metaphysics. In the proceeding I will provide a succinct exposition of each of these sections. This will be followed by a discussion of several questions raised by Rescher’s omission of any treatment here of Whitehead’s doctrine of eternal objects. 1. Exposition of Rescher’s Position According to Rescher, the metaphysical tradition has distinguished two principal kinds of universals, namely, perceptual universals (such as fragrances or colors or sounds), and natural kinds (such as trees or frogs or grains of sand), which are produced by “the patterns of interaction-impact that things make on one another” (PM 69). So that an “extreme idealism that exaggerates the role of mind” in the scheme of things is avoided, it is important to keep these two kinds of universals distinct and unconfused. It is to be noted here that mathematical kinds are not explicitly mentioned by Rescher. This is somewhat surprising as thinking about mathematical entities has led to special problems in relation to the notion of universals, and is central to Plato’s doctrine about which Rescher comments. Despite this omission, the query remains, what is the status of perceptual universals and natural kinds, especially their relation to the notion of mind-dependency and mind-independency? The three classical answers are: nominalism (or conventionalism), realism, and conceptualism. Nominalism asserts that universals are entirely mind-dependent, fictive entities assigned to things solely by virtue of the mind’s operations. In contradistinction, realism contends that universals are already existing aspects of things which minds can perceive or apprehend. Conceptualism is a via media between realism and nominalism as it asserts that universals emerge from “the cognitive interaction between minds and things” (PM 70) and are thus neither sheerly mind-dependent nor sheerly mindindependent. Process metaphysics sees each of these theories as inevitably invoking the notion of processes or operations, either mental or physical. Thus, process philosophy offers resources that are ultimately unavoidable in any adequate account of universals. As Rescher notes (PM 70-71), even Platonic realists must invoke the operation of “participation” when explaining the relation between universal forms and phenomenal things. Despite the necessary involvement of these theories in the concept of process, process philosophy must reject nominalism or conventionalism. This is so, since process philosophy sees processes as extra-mentally real,

137 and, it affirms the view that “(at least some) processes have a unity, structure, and identity not dependent wholly and exclusively on the mind’s operations” (PM 71). Universals exist as aspects of things, not because things exhibit a commonality of properties that are, but because there is a commonality in how things operate or function. Curiously, Rescher does not comment on the preferability of realism over conceptualism or vice versa. However, in light of the way he has defined conceptualism as containing a realistic component, and given his preference elsewhere (see PM 113) for the necessity of “mind-mediated” access to all material reality, I trust that he favors conceptualism. Given the rejection of conventionalism and affirmation of the extra-mental reality of processes, universals lose their strange metaphysical status as “abstract qualities” somehow at a distance from their instantiations. For Rescher, universals are always “in-principle repeatable” structures or routines for performance instantiated concretely in processes. Thus, for instance, the universal “green” is no mysterious property or object occupying a Platonic heaven— and only “really” or “archetypally” green as outside its spatio-temporal instantiations—, but is rather the distinct mental process of perceiving or imagining greenly. Any mind capable of repeating just this perceptual or imaginative process can share the universal “green.” A universal quality, then, is what it is by virtue of what the quality does. Moreover, processes are related in terms of hierarchies of inclusion or collection. Realms can be regarded as megaprocesses made up of the processes of sub-domains and these sub-domains in turn are constituted by the processes of deeper subdomains, and so on. Yet such relations of inclusion need not be continuous in space-time, but can be distributed in discrete packages. A poem is made up of its processes, but it can be made at different times over weeks, months, or years. The essence of Rescher’s view, then, is this: for Rescher, every actual process is inherently a “concrete universal,” for it is at once the concrete or context-specific instantiation of a programmatic operation or way of doing, and a type instance capable of being repeated by other processes. While recipes or programs for doing are repeatable by processes, this does not entail that processes are determined by their past. In an eloquent passage, Rescher puts the point this way (PM 74): “[Process theorists] react sharply against a predeterminist position where everything is constrained to be by what has been and any replay of events would lead to the same preprogrammed result that precludes not only choice and chance but grants the dead hand of the past an absolute authority over the

138 future.” Given this interest in affirming the real openness of the future, and perhaps because of the common association between the notion of “concrete universals” and Hegelian dialectical determinism, Rescher is motivated to discuss the central role of creativity and novelty in the context of presenting a process view of universals. In contrast to pre-determinism, process metaphysics affirms novelty and creativity in nature; Whitehead’s famous adage about “the tedium of indefinite repetition” is here expressively invoked. And there are nuances here, for novelty is no monolithic concept. Following Stephen C. Pepper’s analysis in his Aesthetic Quality, Rescher delineates three types of novelty: There is the uniqueness of each event as “being this-here-now and no other” (PM 75); there is the novel vividness of each event; in addition, there is what might be called “intrusive” novelty, a more radical form of novelty beyond the potentially stale and mundane novelties of eventuniqueness and event-vibrancy. Radical “intrusive” novelty can bring genuine conflict and instability in its wake, and thus order as well as novelty is surely required in a universe capable of profound aesthetic achievement. In sum, says Rescher, “Cosmic process, for Pepper [this is also famously affirmed by Charles Hartshorne1], proceeds through the dialectic of novelty and order” (PM 75). In addition to Pepper’s types of novelty, there is novel innovation viewed ontologically (new things, processes, state of affairs), viewed phenomenically (new types of events in natural or personal histories), and epistemically (new ideas, queries, knowledge, information, etc.). The epistemic variety of innovation involves special issues as the prediction of a new conception involves the presence of the conception in some form at the time of its prediction. Necessarily, however, epistemic innovation can only take place in the abstract without the accompanying full details (otherwise it would not involve prediction of a concept, but would represent the very concept itself). Indeed, the unpredictability of future cosmic process as insisted upon in process metaphysics renders detailed and concrete foresight impossible, although we may well know that there will be innovations in technology, science, religion, art and every other major area of human endeavor. (Comment: Rescher does not here provide much context for understanding how these types of innovation are related to his earlier discussion of novelty. To introduce the vocabulary of

1

Cf. “A Logic of Ultimate Contrasts” and “The Aesthetic Matrix of Value” in Hartshorne 1970, pp. 99-130 and 303-321.

139 innovation suggests some sort of difference between innovation and novelty, but what could this be?) However we are to typologize novelty and creativity, it is abundantly clear that process philosophers are deeply committed to emergence of “new kinds,” of “new species.” The evolutionary orientation of process thinking assures this as is historically exemplified in Darwin’s prediction of new species, Peirce’s apotheosis of evolution into the form of his “cosmogenic philosophy,” and Bergson’s insistence on an inherent creative élan vital as driving nature to indefinitely increased variations among organisms (see PM 77). One nuance here concerns Peirce’s type/token distinction: “In principle, there are two sorts of novelty: novelty as to type and novelty as to item” (PM 77). Relative to this typographical occurrence of x, the next occurrence of x is new as to item or token instance, but not new as to type. On the other hand, the typographical occurrence of this y is both new as to token instance and new as to type. However, type-repetition is nonetheless productive of novelty as, for example, pp is novel with respect to mere p. The on-going impetus to innovation is an impetus not only to the creation of new objects, but to the creation of larger kinds—new forms, genres, styles, modalities of expression. As Rescher poignantly notes, “The avant garde has been with us in every age” (PM 78). Think only of music: from ragtime to jazz to rock to jazz-rock fusion to metal rock to rap to “rap metal,” and so on. Whitehead’s “tedium of indefinite repetition” is anathema to process philosophers, and it is a confirmation of this perspective that the history of art, science, technology and other endeavors perennially exhibits this yearning for the new. Rescher clearly rejects the Platonic idea of universals as timelessly eternal, ahistorical entities, as it were, “haunting reality” at every stage of evolutionary process. Process metaphysics, by contrast, holds that, as the universe evolves, not only do new processes emerge, new laws emerge. Such laws attend the emergence of new kinds of organization of processes from those of sub-atomic entities to molecules to cellular organisms, and so on. Processes metaphysics recognizes two fundamental types of “complexity hierarchies”: physical hierarchies of a material or compositional nature (sub-atomic particles, atoms, molecules, macroscopic physical entities, planets, stars, galaxies, galaxy clusters, etc.) and nomic hierarchies pertaining to order or governance or operation. Even if the physical or nomic hierarchies of the universe are finite, it is still possible for the universe to be infinitely complex in its on-going, detailed functions.

140 Think only of the four-fold finitude of DNA protein complexes. The range of repetitive and combinatorial protein patterns can be extended infinitely and is in fact responsible for the enormous genetic-structural diversity of the earth’s biosphere. As such Rescher points out that there seems to be no inherent reason to postulate a “ceiling” on levels of complexity attending a processual universe (PM 79). Rescher’s comment on endless taxonomic complexity in a process universe implies a salient feature of a process doctrine of universals construed along Peircean-Hartshornean lines: If universals (new kinds of taxonomic complexity) are in principle infinite and protean, then the domain of possibility is itself infinite and protean. Taking his comment about “no ceilings” seriously, this means that possibility is never “closed.” This point is especially interesting in that it contrasts so starkly with Whitehead’s position.2 This leads me to my main critical comments. 2. Some Questions One curiosity is to be found in Rescher’s discussion of “Taxonomic Complexification.” He contrasts the process doctrine of universals with the “classical, Platonic view of universals” such that “they [Plato’s universals] constitute a fixed and unchanging realm” (PM 78). Rightly, C. S. Peirce’s view is invoked as the foil for Plato’s position. However, although Whitehead is mentioned in this discussion with respect to his notion of creativity, the doctrine of eternal objects is nowhere broached. This is curious since clearly Whiteheadian eternal objects have certain Platonic features (see PR 20, 22, 44-46): (1) The domain of eternal objects is, as it were, a complete and closed domain “primordially envisaged” by God such that there can be no “additions” to the domain, and (2) the eternal objects are, like Platonic forms, “forms of definiteness” in contradistinction to the Peirce-Hartshorne view of universals as dense

2

The locus classicus textual sources for Peirce's position, sometimes called the Continuity Thesis, are Collected Papers 3.569 and 6.170. Peirce claims that new universals or possibles for instantiation are created by the becoming of any new actuality; the exact qualia of a new actuality form continua with respect to the exact qualia of existing actualities. These are dense continua which “can be divided into any multitude whatsoever.” Possibles are always protean and inexhaustible by their very nature. This is a position that Hartshorne accepted and vigorously defended against Whitehead from publications as early as Hartshorne’s long, two part article “Contingency and the New Era in Metaphysics”, Journal of Philosophy (1932).

141 continua.3 Why the absence of commentary on a leading process philosopher, Whitehead, in this clearly relevant context, especially since Whitehead seems to provide a counter-example to the Plato/Peirce contrast on universals? If I am reading Rescher correctly, I happen to concur with his Peircean view that genuinely new kinds of processes emerge with the creative advance of actuality, and with the new kinds, new possibilities. However, I am not sanguine about this view in the sense that I am aware of philosophers who pointedly object to this perspective. In light of such objections, a case can be made for advantages in Whitehead’s doctrine. Since it would be interesting to see how Rescher might respond, let me briefly present a main (purported) paradox of the Peirce-HartshorneRescher view, and the corresponding advantage of Whitehead’s theory. I shall also suggest some replies in defense of Rescher’s perspective. If genuinely new structural kinds of processes emerge (not mere novel repetitions as in Rescher’s p to pp example), then a question arises as to the modal status of this emergence. Was the new kind—itself a possible—antecedently possible? On the one hand, it would seem that the answer must be “no,” because the new kind/possible is not a repetition of an already existing kind of routine or structure, since by definition of “new” there is no already existing kind of routine or structure to repeat. On the other hand, neither is the new kind antecedently impossible, for then conditions would be such as to prevent the occurrence of the new kind. But process metaphysics insists that new kinds/possibles do emerge. If all this is the case, however, we seem to have the modally counter-intuitive consequence that, as Santayana once phrased it in his “Apologia Pro Mente Sua” when replying to Bergson and Hartshorne—”possibles […] become possible only after they are realized.”4 What sort of modal condition is this? Should not this be modeled in standard modal logic as (~◊p & ~~◊p), a clear modal contradiction? Whitehead’s doctrine of eternal objects suffers from no such counter-intuitive consequence. Any new kind of structure which is actualized for the first time is clearly antecedently possible, for Whitehead, because it is present as a pure possibility or ensemble of pure possibilities in the primordial envisagement of God, an envisagement which is complete. It is important to point out in this context that, for Whitehead,

3

For an exposition of this theory, see Shields 1991.

4

Santayana 1940, p. 591.

142 these pure possibilities are ontologically there, are eternally present in God’s primordial nature, whether God is consciously aware of them or not: On Lewis Ford’s interpretation of Whitehead’s doctrine, there are numerous pure possibilities which do not enter into God’s conscious awareness because there may never have existed an actual context in which such possibilities are relevant to God’s propositional feeling, although the possibilities are nonetheless present in God’s nontemoral primordial “unconscious.”5 John Cobb’s revised Whiteheadian model, wherein Hartshorne’s concept of a personally ordered society of occasions is adopted, sees the primordial nature as an everlastingly re-enacted comprehensive envisagement and primordial ordering of eternal objects in all combinatorial patterns.6 Such controversies of Whiteheadian interpretation are completely innocent for the present context, however, since on either view, the possibility of new kinds of structure is ontologically grounded in the eternal existence of pure possibilities in the primordial envisagement. On the other hand, I think there is a clear and plausible response on behalf of process proponents of protean possibility to the above objection suggested by Santayana. In a process universe, time distinctions are essential to our discourse about emergence. The modal representation, ~◊p, could only characterize a conjectured process-kind p during a certain historical duration. Contra Santayana, possibles can be realized when the necessary conditions for their realization emerge. There is thus no modal contradiction when attributing time distinctions to modal representations of process-kinds in any modal system that admits time distinctions: [(~◊p at t) & (◊p at t')], where t ≠ t', is certainly not a modal contradiction. Indeed, the locution “That was not possible until now” is perfectly clear from a common sense as well as process metaphysical point of view. Put another way, using the language of “accessibility” in contemporary modal logic as in, for example, Kripke’s intuitionist construal of S4, we could say that, at a time t, “p is not accessible from the actual world W, and, at a subsequent time t', “p is accessible from W. Moreover, I have published an argument in favor of Peirce’s (and thus also, on my interpretation, Rescher’s) protean conception of possibility (or, more dialectically put, a counter-argument to Whitehead’s “closed eternal objects” theory) based on considerations of modern set

5

Ford 1973, pp. 62-63.

6

Cobb 1965, pp. 155f., 196-203.

143 theory. (For what it is worth, this argument played some role in Lewis Ford’s recent conversion to the position that the domain of eternal objects can admit additions.7) In the following, Rescher’s “no ceiling” thesis is justified by virtue of the incoherence attributed to the notion of absolute or highest infinity to which the notion of a closed and complete domain of eternal objects or possibles seems to be committed:8 That the Absolute Infinite (the set of all ordinals), and the related set-theoretic concept of Everything or V (the set of all sets), are strictly inconceivable can be shown by appeal to the so-called Reflection Principle. The Reflection Principle is the principle that, for every conceivable property P of V (or Ω), there is a set S constitutive of V (or Ω), and non-identical to V (or Ω), which has P. For instance, let P be the proposition that “V is not an ordinal number.” However, this is at once to introduce a set S constitutive of V, namely, the set of thoughts such that “V is not an ordinal number,” which must be somehow included within V by virtue of its conceptual intention. Since this holds of every conceivable property, it is entailed that V, or its replacement Ω, can never be described in principle, because it must always be at a meta-level of distance from any rational description of its complete and defining properties. But to take something as actual which cannot be described even in principle (nor can it be set-generated, see below) seems too close to contradiction to be plausible. For, on conjecturing such a circumstance, one is proposing that something which is completely protean in its conception is also actual— the indefinite is thus the definite, the potential the actual. Because of the Reflection Principle, it seems to me that it is best to think of V or Ω as notations for maximal possibility which never reach the status of the achieved or actual. Thus, the mode of possibility is never closed in principle. Hartshorne seems to me right to suggest, with Peirce, that “inexhaustibility” is part and parcel of our primitive, intuitive notion of possibility. Perhaps one might object that a highest infinity need not represent the eternal objects; why not just let a simple transfinite stand for the size of eternal objects? But surely this will not do, since the pure possibility for any given addition to a simple transfinite must somehow be in the primordial envisagement when such envisagement is characterized as

7

Ford 1994, p. 205. Prof. Ford here cites a more informal version of my argument as presented in correspondence.

8

Shields 1992, pp. 125-126.

144 absolute or closed, e.g., the possibility that ω + 1 or ω + ω, etc. Notice also that, since the eternal objects are “forms of definiteness,” they are thus items identifiable in principle for inclusion in a set of eternal objects (unlike the vague possibles or continua of Peirce’s theory). Accordingly, questions about the status of the size of the set of eternal objects seem to be “fair game” here. No such issue, by definition, troubles Rescher’s “no ceiling” doctrine. Rescher’s response to all the above considerations is most welcome.

145 References Cobb, Jr., John. 1965. A Christian Natural Theology, Based on the Thought of Alfred North Whitehead. Philadelphia: Westminister Press. Ford, Lewis S. 1973. “Whitehead’s Differences From Hartshorne” in Two Process Philosophers: Hartshorne’s Encounter with Whitehead. Ed. by Lewis S. Ford. Tallahassee, Florida: American Academy of Religion. Ford, Lewis S. 1994. “The Creation of ‘Eternal’ Objects,” The Modern Schoolman, 51, 3. Hartshorne, Charles. 1970. Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method. LaSalle, Illinois. Open Court Publishing Company. Shields, George W. 1991. “Hartshorne and Creel on Impassibility,” Process Studies, 21, 1. Shields, George W. 1992. “Infinitesimals and Hartshorne’s Set-Theoretic Platonism,” The Modern Schoolman, 49, 2.

V. Rescher’s Philosophy of Nature Pete A. Y. Gunter (North Texas)

Abstract This essay is an examination of Nicholas Rescher’s philosophy of nature as presented in Chapter V of his Process Metaphysics (1996). It contains four parts. The first is a criticism of the author’s apparent conflation of simple neo-Darwinism in biology with the notion that evolution contains a nisus or drive towards the future. The second consists of a discussion of his avowal of evolutionary “progress” in the light of contemporary biology’s stubborn refusal to allow that progress can mean anything other than differential reproduction. On these grounds the evolutionary optimism, which Rescher recommends, appears, not baseless, but apparently undefined. The third concerns his apparent belief in the Truth of neo-Darwinism, a belief that stands in strange contrast with his claims regarding the provisionality and incompleteness of science, and with some interesting discoveries in recent biology. The essay will conclude with a discussion of the possible development of a fully worked-out Rescherian philosophy of nature and of the epistemological and metaphysical status of such a philosophy on the basis of his pragmatic idealism.

In most spheres of human endeavor, to get the right answer one must ask the right question. It may be that some or all of the questions asked of Rescher in this essay are not the right questions: that is, that they show misunderstanding of his standpoint, or otherwise stand outside the parameters of his thought. Even if this were true, however, I think that the raising of such questions is important. A philosophy of nature, I would argue, is incomplete without a philosophy of biology. The questions put below attempt to make it clear why this is so, and to suggest some directions, which a Rescherian philosophy of biology might take.

148 1. Nisus Versus the Blind Watchmaker In section 6 of his chapter on the process philosophy of nature the author states: On the issue of purposiveness in nature, process philosophers divide into two principal camps. On the one side is the naturalistic (and generally secularist) wing that sees nature processually as a matter of an inner push or nisus to something new and different. On the other side is the teleological (and often theological) wing that sees nature’s processuality as a matter of teleological directness towards positive destination. (PM 99) Both, the author continues, agree that innovation and novelty play a central role in nature. But the naturalistic wing sees these as “chance-driven randomness” (PM 99) leading away from the past while the teleologicaltheological wing sees them as pursuing a purposiveness “preestablished” (PM 100) by some directive force. The atheological wing sees the creative workings of a self-sustaining nature that doesn’t need God. The theological wing, by contrast, sees God’s handwriting in the epic of evolution. There are two problems with the author’s presentation. First, there is the exclusivity of his distinction between the two wings of process philosophy. The second is his conflation of “nisus” or “inner push” with Darwinian evolution’s chance/natural selection. It is not clear whether Rescher’s sharp distinction between modes of process philosophy is intended as a description of the present state of this philosophy or as a fundamental distinction between the two possible ways of understanding evolution. One suspects that the author wishes to affirm the latter: i.e. that he intends to present both an inclusive and exhaustive disjunction. If this is the case, then though his disjunction may well be intended as inclusive (“strong”) as it stands, it scarcely exhausts the possibilities. Between the author’s proposed alternatives there is a third: i.e. the view that evolution is driven by an initial “push” which is vectored towards the future, though having no exact goal. This understanding of evolution is teleological, since it insists on a fundamental goal-seeking activity. But it is not “finalistic”: it does not hold that the goals to be attained are predetermined. It may hold that they do not pre-exist in any way. It does not involve an “omega point,” to which everything in evolution converges. It involves, instead, evolutionary divergence: a tree with continually exfoliating branches. The philosopher best known for proposing this view is Henri Bergson. In Creative Evolution he states:

149 If life realizes a plan, it ought to manifest a greater harmony the further it advances, just as the house shows better and better the idea of the architect as stone is set on stone. If, on the contrary, the unity of life is to be found solely in the impetus which pushes it along […]the harmony is not in front, but behind […] it is given at the start as an impulsion, not placed at the end as an attraction.1 Thus “life” splits up into a multiplicity of species, each expressing a different tendency, each potentially in conflict with the others; neither singly nor jointly do they constitute a plan. Rather, they express a free, spontaneous creativity. Bergson was certainly not alone in proposing this intermediate view of evolution. It is found also, though in a less pronounced form, in Alfred North Whitehead, who in no way presumes that either evolution or human history aim towards a single harmonious or culminating point.2 The same is true of Charles Hartshorne,3 and even of Wilmon Henry Sheldon, who the author earlier cites as a prominent exponent of process thought.4 It is interesting to note that the notion of a general purposing which is still not directed towards particular, pre-set ends, ought to be very well known. A form of this notion is developed by Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Judgement.5 Kant does not apply this concept to biological evolution—a theory he considered but rejected.6 Subsequent transformations of the idea and extensions of this “purposeless purpose” to biological evolution must be understood as owing a debt in his classic conceptual construction. 1

Bergson, Henri, Creative Evolution. Intro. Pete A.Y. Gunter. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1983, 103.

2

Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1933, 392. In this study of the role of ideas in human history there is a picture of an uneven Movement of history towards higher levels, with no suggestion that a highest and Complete level can occur.

3

Charles Hartshorne, The Logic of Perfection. Lasalle, Illinois: Open Count Publishing Company, 1962, 205-206.

4

Wilmon Henry Sheldon, God and Polarity: A Synthesis of Philosophers. New Haren, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1954, 531-532, 543, 552.

5

Immanuel Kant. The Critique of Judgement. Trans. James C. Meredith. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957, Part I, 61-63, Part II, 15, 24, 33-34.

6

Op. Cit., pp. 78-79.

150 The author discusses biological evolution as if he means to take up a position similar to that of Bergson. He speaks of an inner push or “nisus” in evolution, which leads to “something new and different” (PM 9). This, however, is for him omnipresent in nature, in life and in nonliving things equally. Physical processes are, he states, “self-propulsive,” “selfengendered.” The basic drive of “nisus” of the real world is, he states, not, as with Spinoza, self-preservation (conatus se realizandi) (PM 85). As concerns the world as a whole, then, the author speaks as almost a vitalist. I have no problem with this. My problem is, however, that of understanding how he can extend this rubric (nisus, conatus) to biological evolution. This was not a problem for Bergson, who did not accept Darwinism. The problem I see is that the author appears to accept Darwinism, without reservations of any kind. He correctly defines Darwinism as involving, exhaustively, […] teleologically blind natural selection operating with respect to teleologically blind random mutations. (PM 100) Evolution on these terms would thus be a matter of happenstance. If a particular mutation happens in a particular context, the organism to which it happens will have descendants which are more likely to live, or if unlucky, more likely to die, depending on the significance of the mutation. The author, however, wishes to understand this straightforward quasimechanical process as the efflorescence of a creative evolution. It is driven by an “inner push” (PM 99) or, as we have seen, a conatus or nisus. Like other aspects of nature it is, he states, driven by an “inner development” or “internal origination of order” (PM 93). But what can be “inner” about this process? The mutation is caused by an external agency (the mutagen, of whatever kind and/or now, perhaps, transcriptional error). The genotype is changed not by its own activity but passively by impact on its constituent DNA. Analogously, natural selection hardly seems an active positive response of the organism or its descendants. Some live because the environment allows; the rest die. I think it fair to ask, then, where the “inner push” is, that is supposed to keep evolution moving. All appears, on the terms of classical Darwinism, to be a matter of the passivity, not the activity, of life. The author will surely reply that to treat evolution in this way (as the great majority of biologists treat it) is to fail to grasp that evolution is propelled by “chance-driven randomness” (PM 99). Rescher, however, gives little indication of how “chance” can turn the passivity of life in the Darwin scheme into an active cornucopia of self-creation. He owes this, I think, to his readers.

151 There is another problem in this regard. It now appears that life emerged far earlier on this planet than had previously been expected (as soon as continents and oceans formed). It then stagnated for hundreds of millions of years, exhibiting no developmental impulse of any kind. The subsequent history of life often shows the same kind of stasis. Without the impact of bolides from outer space, without periods of volcanism and/or climatic change life seems to lack the capacity to transform itself decisively. Without an asteroid impact, which killed off the dinosaurs, it is not at all clear that we would be here to wonder about it. It appears that the driving force of chance, finding itself powerless in certain contexts, manages to take very long vacations indeed. 2. Defining the Fittest Evolution is a fascinating subject, which can be viewed in a number of ways. The author, though he might not want to construe the word literally, states that it embodies “progress.” Process philosophy: […] has always looked to evolutionary theory to pull the plum of collective progress from the pie of distributed mortality. In the small—item by item—nature’s processes are self-cancelling: What arises in the course of time perishes in the course of time. But nevertheless the overall course of processual change tends to the development of an ever richer, more complex and sophisticated condition of things on the world’s ample stage. (PM 101) There are processes of decay, contraction, dying, extinction, but there are also processes of growth, expansion, and living. But process philosophy […] regards nature’s micro processes as components of an overall macro process whose course is upward rather than downward, so to speak. (PM 101) The remainder of this section will deal with the problem of the “so to speak.” As Stephen Jay Gould points out, Darwin himself struggled over whether evolution embodied “progress” or is simply a series of specific adaptations.7 Gould is convinced that to impute progress to evolution is to make a fundamental mistake. Most contemporary biologists (though not

7

Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life. New York: W. W. Norton, 1989, 357-358, 305.

152 necessarily accepting his take on the meaning of the Burgess Shale) tend to agree with him. If so it is because they have come to define natural selection as meaning only differential reproduction. The only meaning that can be given by contemporary science to biological evolution or to the term “fitness,” so tied to it in the popular mind, is the leaving of descendants: nothing more. Any number of questions can be raised about this contention. For example, one might ask whether statements about the survival of the survivors (i.e. the “fittest”) are tautologous8 or whether on the terms of this definition of “evolved” we are not allowed to specify the physical characteristic of organisms which allow them to “succeed.”9 The point pursued here, however, is simply that if “more evolved” means simply “more numerous,” it is very hard to see how, from the vantage point of science, we can talk in biology about progress, about upward as opposed to downward, or even about a “richer,” more “complex,” more “sophisticated” condition of things. Fundamental scientific evolutionary theory is now mute about them. Or even denies their intelligibility. Consider the following example. A relatively elaborate organism (assuming we can introduce the term “elaborate”) wanders into a context (say, the gut of a larger animal) and, in this nutrient-rich environment its descendants gradually lose their nervous systems, motor systems, and perceptual organs, and end as parasites, reduced to little more than sacks of eggs in their hosts’ intestinal tracts. But in doing so the organism manages to leave far more descendants than did its ancestors in their prior, mobile, active existence. We can only conclude, then, that the organism in question has evolved. But there is more. Had it sought out another environment originally, in which it developed a more elaborate central nervous system along with more efficacious sensory and motor systems, but produced fewer descendants over-all (perhaps because limited to some specialized environmental niche), we would presumably have to say that it had devolved—or some such term: downhill. This is surely paradoxical. And the paradox stems from the inability of Darwinism to specify any criterion for “evolution” or “evolved” independent of the producing of progeny. The author seems to presume some such criterion—or it seems to me presumed in what he states about 8

Elliott Sober, Philosophy of Biology. 2nd Ed. Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 2000, 70-74.

9

Richard Milton, Shattering the Myths of Darwinism. Rochester, Vermont: Oak Street Press, 1997, 128-129.

153 evolution. Perhaps he might wish, if Darwinism as presently formulated can not provide it, to state such a criterion independently of science: not independently of the massive panoply of facts made available by the natural sciences, but a criterion external to them and, hopefully, capable of “organising” them. But the sheer diversity of possible criteria warns us that the problem is not easily resolved. Consider: 1. elaborateness 2. sophistication 3. anti-entropic tendency (negentropy) 4. novelty 5. information 6. complexity 7. hierarchical integration. And the list can be enlarged. The two most technical (quantifiable) of these are “information” and “complexity.” Neither of these seems capable of giving the unambiguous criterion we want. Perhaps we should look for a “regulative principle” of some sort. 3. The Perfect Paradigm Darwinism, since its appearance in 1859, has been attacked regularly often, with venom. In spite of its critics, however, it has continued to strengthen itself, adding first a satisfactory genetic theory (c. 1900) (and becoming in the process, neo-Darwinism) and then adding, in the 1930’s, population theory (thus becoming “Darwinism, the modern synthesis”). This latter Neodarwinian edifice has been strengthened once again by the discovery of the DNA molecule (c. 1954) and its function as the basis of genetic information. It is easy to see, therefore, why Darwinism should be so widely accepted today. At each stage it has become a more powerful, more comprehensive, more accurate theory, which has gradually forced its opponents to surrender or abandon their critiques. (The exception is, of course, Creation Science, which denies not only Darwinism but also any theory of evolution. Theories of special creation need not be considered here.) It is thus not surprising that the author should support the Darwinian theory. Thus he states: Where human intelligence is concerned, biological development is undoubtedly Darwinian, with teleologically blind natural selection operating with respect to teleologically blind mutations. Cultural evolution, on the other hand, is generally Teilhardian, governed by rationally guided selection among purposely devised mutational variations. (PM 100; cf. 81) That is—I believe I am not putting words in the author’s mouth— biological evolution is Darwinian, human cultural evolution Lamarckian,

154 involving the purposeful achievement and inheritance of acquired knowledge. If the author is indeed a convinced Darwinian—he spends very little time considering either theories or the difficulties of contemporary biology. There are some reasons why he might reconsider his convictions. One has already been discussed: the puzzle of the devolved organism, which is evolved through its multitudinous descendants. (Or: the problem of stating a criterion for “evolution” apart from “differential reproduction.”) Another—a very old objection—involves the “Problem of Perfection.” Can random mutations and natural selection (different in different contents at different times) by itself explain the creation of anything as complex, or as organized as the eye (the old example) or (a new example) the immune system? One will be told that all this was resolved long ago. But the more carefully science has studied life, the more complex it has been discovered to be. For example (one of many) when it was taught about the cell membrane in university biology classes, it was made to appear as little more than a 3-d fold of Saran Wrap. Today the attempt to describe the structure (especially the dynamic structure) of the cell membrane is now a full-blown research program: ongoing. The “Problem of “Perfection” seems harder to shelve than it once appeared to be.10 There is another problem very recently beginning to emerge. When the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology was given its classic for (c. 1960) it provided a very clear, definite model on which to study inheritance and reproduction. On its terms DNA transmits its information to successive RNA’s, which then transform this information at the ribosome, making amino acids into proteins—the stuff of life. This model has been extremely successful on a number of fronts. But there are reasons to doubt its accuracy. For one, it is possible that most RNA’s do not code for proteins at all but for “RNA genes” which appear to play some vital role in gene expression.11

10

For two recent studies of this problem, based on the currently available data of molecular biology, Cf. Robert Shapiro. Origins: A Skeptic’s Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth. New York: Summit Books, 1986, 332; Michael J. Bether, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. New York: The Free Press, 1996, 307.

11

John Travis, “Biological Dark Matter.” Science News, 161, No. 2, January 12, 2002, 26-28.

155 If so, the Central Dogma would have to be significantly rethought. Most or much DNA would have to be understood as coding for RNA’s, whose function is not now understood. These RNA’s might convey primarily “construction information” or might even be capable of responding to environmental factors. Which leads to the next point. Over the last few years some striking facts have been discovered in the way that environment affects development. I will try to describe these new, very puzzling facts as briefly as possible, beginning with some very ordinary examples and proceeding towards cases that are increasingly unordinary. The first concerns the lowly tadpole, which, it turns out, in the presence of dangerous predators not only exhibits less active behavior but grows an extra-deep tail fin; when raised amidst other tadpoles it grows a big head with proportionally big mouth. The former change in form does not last into adulthood. The latter, however, results in a frog with noticeably longer and wider legs. Such changes in genetic expression caused (somehow) by environmental factors are also found in water fleas and radishes. But these changes are passed on fully to succeeding generations. Concerning water fleas: To check for inherited effects, (the) lab raised one generation of water fleas near predatory phantom midge larvae. The water fleas grew huge helmets, halving mortality rates. When moved to safe water, they produced daughters with big helmets in all three broods that the researchers checked. Granddaughters too had somewhat enlarged crests.12 Similar defensive structures appear in radishes when leaves are chewed on by cabbage butterfly caterpillars. New leaves on such plants (in the same generations) have ten times the concentration of insect-repelling chemicals and thirty percent more spikes. This is in itself surprising. Still more surprising, the descendants of these plants bristle with the same defences. These phenomena (and others that might be mentioned) are inherited, but phase out in succeeding generations. The mechanisms on which they rest are unknown. If the genotype in such cases is not affected, then what is? Besides effects occurring in one generation and those extending (but progressively diminishing) into, there are the results exhibited by Edward J. Steele and his colleagues, concerning the immune system, changes which they believe are caused by environmental factors, and are

12

S(usan) Milius, “Threatened Mothers Have Tougher Offspring.” Science News, 156, No. 10, September 4, 1999, 151.

156 inherited perhaps permanently. Immunological resistance to disease, provoked in mice, they point out in Lamarck’s signature, are inherited.13 If so, how many other such heritable changes in the immune system can be provoked by environmental factors? The authors, following Arthur Koestler, attempt to establish a limited Lamarckism within Darwinism.14 But perhaps they should have taken Barbara McKlintock and not Arthur Koestler) as a guide. McKlintock, a geneticist working with maize, received the Nobel Prize for her discovery of the “dynamic genome”: that is, the discovery that DNA, the most conservative of molecules, is constantly shuffling and reshuffling itself. Gene “jump,” act “at a distance,” and (a more recent discovery) there is a continual increase/decrease in the number of segments of DNA (RNA?). It goes without saying that the surprising effects mentioned above suggest a surprising plasticity, a capacity for the novel creation of dynamic form, either in the DNA itself, or in its “expression,” or both. But besides proposing and validating the thesis of the dynamic genome, McKlintock espoused a second thesis, far more heretical. The genes, she held, are sensitive to their surroundings, and respond to them. The surroundings, she hinted, might be the germ cell, or the organism, or … the environment more generally. The nature of the response might involve the creation of new genetic information. That is, McKlintock believed in “Lamarckian” evolution: the acquiring of new characteristics in one generation that could be inherited by the next. Or: she believed in a kind of quasi-Lamarckism, one lacking in presumed efforts made by the organism to contract desired characteristics, one lacking another traditional Lamarckian assumption, the notion that “mutations occur when the organism experiences severe environmental pressure. In her masterful biography of McKlintock, A Feeling for the Organism, Evelyn Fox Keller suggests that in McKlintock’s case it is a matter of “going between Darwin and Lamarck.”: of developing a theory which has some characteristics of each without being either.15 Like Lamarckianism, it would involve direct interaction of 13

Edward J. Steele, Robyn A. Lindley, and Robert V. Blanden, Lamarck’s Signature: How Retrogenes are Changing Darwin’s Natural Selection Paradigm. Reading, Massachusetts: Perseus Books, 1998, 286.

14

Arthur Koestler, The Case of the Midwife Toad. New York: Vintage Books, 1978, 187.

15

Evelyn Fox Keller, A Feeling for the Organism. New York: Evelyn Fox Keller, 1983, p. 195.

157 genome with environment and a plausible imputation of activity to the organism in the evolutionary process; like Darwinism it would involve natural selection as also being fundamental to the shaping of the organism. 4. Biological progress and philosophy of nature This section consists of two partially related discussions. The first is a suggestion for criteria for biological progress based on remarks in Rescher’s Process Philosophy: A Survey of Basic Issues concerning the nation and definition of scientific progress. This reverses the usual approach, but might turn out to be quite fruitful. The second is a general discussion of what is the status of a philosophy of nature in a system of pragmatic idealism like Rescher’s. If we can never be certain about science and its “real” relations to the world, as he insists, what then can we make of a philosophy of nature which, we must assume, is an interpretation of nature? Unlike some contemporaries, Rescher is convinced by the reality of scientific progress, which, he believes, can be specified: Accordingly, scientific theorizing, as a fundamentally inductive process, involves the search for, or the theory structure capable of accommodating the available body of data— proceeding under the aegis of established principles of inductive systematization: uniformity, simplicity, harmony, and such principles that implement the general idea of cognitive economy. Directly evidential considerations apart, the warrant of inductively authorized contentions turns exactly on this issue of how efficiently and effectively they coordinate data—on mutual interconnection, and systematic enmeshment. (PP78) To be sure, these factors must be understood, the author explains, in the context of an imperative to extend and expand as far as possible the database from which theorizing begins. Science’s explorations are increasingly inclusive of experience (PP79). One would like to suggest that it is possible to construe the evolution of life in terms similar to these, with the more “highly evolved” organisms defined as having achieved greater economy of organization, more efficiently and effectively coordinating their contents and expanding as far as possible their “reach” into their environment. The author treats such factors, however, not as defining the progress of science, but only as necessary conditions, which by themselves do not define scientific truth. The surest test of scientific truth is, he asserts, praxis:

158 Applicative praxis—not theoretical merit but practical capability—is the best available standard for assessing scientific progress. Clearly the most promising prospect calls for approaching the issue of scientific progress in terms of pragmatic rather than strictly cognitive standards […] progressively superior science […] [manifests] itself as such […] through the superiority of its applications as judged by the old Bacon-Hobbes standard of scientia propter potentiam—that is, through affording us increased power of prediction and control. (PP89) Perhaps Rescher would consider extending this standard of scientific progress (praxis and its inescapable conditions) from science to biological evolution. The factors noted above (efficiency, outreach) would, in a context of reproductive success, define in a more satisfactory way what it means for life to “progress.” Though a consistent “idealist,” Rescher argues that he is as firmly committed to realism as any philosopher. But most forms of realism, he believes, are naïve. Realism is for him a postulate, a necessary precondition of scientific investigation. But the fallibility of our concepts is painfully evident—increasingly so. Accordingly, we can not say that the world is such that the paraphernalia of our science actually exist as such. Given the necessity of recognizing the claims of our science to be tentative and provisional, one cannot possibly take the stance that it depicts reality. At best, one can say that it affords an estimate of it, an estimate that will presumably stand in need of eventual revision and whose creatures-of-theory may in the last analysis not be real at all.16 We thus stand in a kind of mid-position between ignorance and certainty, but cannot give up our belief in the existence of a reality “out there” or our commitments to make it intelligible: It is thus useful to draw a clear distinction between a realism of achievement. We are certainly not in a position to claim that science as we have it achieves a characterization of reality. Still, science remains unabashedly realistic in intent or aspiration. Its

16

Nicholas Rescher, The Limits of Science. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, p. 156.

159 aim is unquestionably to answer our questions about the world correctly and to describe the world ‘as it actually is’.17 Scientific breakthroughs, at whatever level, may not succeed in establishing with absolute certainty the existence of quarks, neutrinos, pi mesons, and the like. But they represent an enlargement of understanding of nature. Rescher knows that the position he outlines here is problematic. It has certainly been debated.18 The general difficulty to which it gives rise is that of deciding whether, on its terms, we can ever be said to have any definite knowledge of a world “out there.” Pi mesons and neutrinos, like tachyons and hidden variables, may be talked of categorically but are forever tinged with the hypothetical. Perhaps Rescher would like to say that science has a general genuine relevance to the world “out there” but cannot be held to claims that particulars (mesons, neutrinos) are ultimately real. One would like to have further clarification. A brilliantly engineered ambiguity, however intriguing, cries out for some sort of explicative scheme. Similarly for any far-ranging philosophy of nature that the author might want to develop, one would have to ask about the status of that philosophy. Does it have some characteristics of a myth: Dianoia, in Plato’s divided line, describing aspects of the real without perfect accuracy? Is it to be based on some subtle argument from analogy, or to be conceived in terms of Kantian regulative ideas? Or, in the end, are Rescher’s reflections on a process philosophy of nature to be understood less as theoretically accurate pictures of The Real than as “pragmatic”: as based on the assumption the idea of a processual world will in the end prove more fruitful for us, both philosophically and scientifically, than the present widely held substance-based philosophy? If so, on this point I can only agree wholeheartedly with him. Pure theoretical excellence is not all there is to science or philosophy. Working within process philosophy may be, in the end, the most practical move we could make, philosophically or scientifically.

17

Nicholas Rescher, Op. Cit., p. 157.

18

Cf., for example, Hans-Joachim Niemann, “Rescher in Kontext: Eine Antwort auf Lorenz B. Puntel.” Conceptus, 30, No. 76, 1997, 67-97; Axel Wusterhube. “Noch Einmal: Rationalist und Normativitat.” Protosotziologie, 8, No. 9, 149-169.

160 References Gunter, Pete Addison Yancey (Edited and translated), Bergson and the Evolution of Physics, Knoxville, The University of Tennessee Press, 1969.

VI. REFLECTIONS ON PROCESS AND PERSONS Harald Atmanspacher (Freiburg) • Jack Martin (Simon Fraser)

Abstract This contribution reflects on Nicholas Rescher's discussion of “process and persons” in his book Process Metaphysics. Its main purposes are to offer conceptual commentary on some of Rescher's terms, and to suggest some options for process thinking more radical than Rescher's, partly motivated by recent developments in science and philosophy. First, a brief analysis of the relation between process and time is presented, emphasizing irreversibility and temporal holism as crucial for a processual worldview. Second, instability and transiency are introduced as key concepts for a better understanding of notions such as creativity and freedom. Third, the importance of the sociocultural domain is pointed out in addition to psychological and biophysical factors for the constitution of personhood. And fourth, it is argued that such an extension can be endowed with ontological significance in the framework of a non-reductive and non-hierarchical ontological relativity.

1. Introduction Rescher begins his chapter “Process and Persons” by noting the difficulties Western philosophers have experienced in framing a substance ontology of personhood. Although requiring biophysical bodies and brains, certain central aspects of persons, such as selves and their experiential and hermeneutic aspects, resist ontological formulation in purely physical terms. Even if immaterial substances and other legacies of Cartesian dualism are left well behind, it is far from obvious how best to consider the

162 ontological status of such important aspects of personhood. Rescher's approach is to adopt a theory of processual levels that treats a person as “an experience-integrating life process” constituted by a developmental sequence within a particular life cycle (PM 116). In doing so, we believe that Rescher is on the right track, especially when he takes pains to clarify that such a processual view in no way erodes a personhood and agency worth having, regardless of the inevitable transiency of any particular life. What we want to do here is to offer a few clarifications, distinctions, and suggestions that might move us further toward a genuinely processual ontology of persons. Although in general agreement with Rescher, we believe that his process ontology requires greater clarity and precision, and that his pervasive naturalism may prevent a full appreciation of the sociocultural, relational constitution of persons given necessary and enabling biophysical conditions. Because “process comes in all shapes and sizes” (PM 118), our discussion begins with a clarification of some general points concerning process, time and innovation (introduced in chapter two of Rescher's book), which specifies these notions explicitly enough to understand them in more detail. Our third section refers to Rescher's emphasis on transiency as one of the key concepts of a truly processual world view. In addition to Rescher's discussion of value we sketch some ideas to develop concepts such as creativity and freedom in terms of stability arguments. The notion of instability is proposed to be of crucial significance in this regard. In sections four and five, the concept of personhood presented by Rescher is compared with other approaches discussed in contemporary literature. A significant direction in which Rescher's ideas could be developed further is the explicit inclusion of sociocultural contexts in the constitution of a person. An important condition making this possible is an ontology defined relative to particular domains of reality, allowing us to take different domains equally seriously. This implies a rejection of a strong reductionist point of view in favour of emergent states and properties within the domains considered. The traditional unidirectional hierarchy from biophysical to psychological and finally sociocultural levels is thus replaced by non-hierarchically organized domains with multidirectional emergence relations among them. 2. Process and Time, Process and Innovation From a contemporary point of view, the concept of a process cannot be discussed without the concept of time: “Processes develop over time,” says

163 Rescher (PM 38). What remains to be clarified, though, is which of the two is to be considered logically prior with respect to the other. The radical process view ascribes priority to process and introduces time as a derived notion. An early well-known example of such a position is Aristotle. On the other hand, the usual way to define processes formally is based on functions of time t, t → f(t), where f usually represents the state of a system or (one or many of) its properties. In this view, the concept of time is a precondition to describe a process as a function of time. The concept of time in this framework is that of a so-called parameter time, universally preset and independent of the particular process which it parametrizes. Time in this sense is defined by clocks of different degrees of sophistication, from sundials and hourglasses to quartz clocks and atomic clocks. Physics distinguishes two classes of processes depending on whether or not the time-reversal invariance of fundamental laws of science is broken. A process is time-reversal invariant if f(t) = f(-t): watching a movie of such a process does not allow one to distinguish a particular temporal direction in it. Processes of this kind are time-symmetric or reversible and rigorously apply only to isolated systems. Moreover, reversible processes do not provide true novelty; novel facts, which cannot be undone once they have happened, imply that the time-inversion invariance of the process be broken. These important limitations raise the question of how realistic reversible processes are. Any system interacting with its environment cannot be isolated but needs to be open. Interactions of a system with its environment are known to break the time-reversal symmetry of reversible processes. As a consequence, two directions of time arise, one from past to future (forward) and another from future to past (backward). The emergence of two temporal directions due to temporal symmetry breaking is a rigorous mathematical result which is free from additional ancillary arguments. In remarkable contrast, the selection of one of those two directions of time as relevant cannot be justified by purely mathematical or physical arguments alone. A typical non-physical, epistemological criterion for selecting the forward arrow of time is causality: causes precede their effects (see, e.g., Primas 1992). This type of causality corresponds to Aristotle's causa efficiens. Backward causation, alluding to teleological aspects of goal-oriented processes (as in Aristotle's causa finalis), would violate physical causality and is usually disregarded.

164 The irreversibility of temporal evolution is a crucial feature of many situations in everyday life (hot coffee cools down rather than spontaneously heating up) and our psychological experience of time. Tenses like past, present, and future structure our experience in such a way that we distinguish between memories of the past, anticipation of the future, and the transition between them at present. Future, contingent events become irreversible, past facts at the time at which they happen. Without this irreversibility there is no innovation (or novelty). Both contingency and innovation (among others) are crucial categories for Rescher's understanding of process (PM 31), especially as applied in his chapter on “Process and Persons.” Causal or functional connectedness of some kind is often assumed to characterize the concept of a process in a broad sense. “The successive stages of a natural process are not a mere juxtaposition of arbitrary, unconnected factors […] They are united by a systemic causal or functional agency under the aegis of a lawful regularity” (PM 39). However, random (Markov) processes, consisting of sequences of just such uncorrelated events, are very useful tools to describe processes as well. Moreover, it is now well established that the distinction between random and lawful processes is a matter of description under particular conditions (Gustafson 1997). Systems exhibiting deterministic chaos are an important case in point. After all, the criterion of causal or functional connectedness is not so simple and may be even irrelevant in complex systems. A more relevant, and at the same time more sophisticated, candidate to characterize processes is the concept of temporal holism, sometimes also called temporal nonlocality, which has been studied in quantum systems (Mahler 1999) and chaotic systems (Misra and Prigogine 1983, Atmanspacher 1997). This concept is in the spirit of the radical process view and goes beyond the idea of a connectedness of successive stages of a process in a decisive way. Its essence is that successive stages cannot even be distinguished (within some system-specific time interval). Such temporal holism, which Rescher does not address, might be developed to become a significant feature of and viable criterion for a truly processual world view. If processes are considered as temporal wholes without successive stages then it becomes inadmissible to speak about causal or functional connections between such stages. This is highly relevant to understand temporal patterns (such as rhythms or melodies) as wholes rather than sequences of states. From a psychological point of view, the concept of

165 temporal holism provides the possibility to conceptualize the notion of an experienced now with non-vanishing, finite duration (Pöppel 1997), which is absent in physical sciences. In the neurosciences, ideas like this are currently discussed as possible solutions for the problem of intermodal binding, i.e. the capability to merge perceptions of one and the same object in different sensory modalities. Limited time intervals of presence, within which temporal holism persists, are a key to James' ''specious present'' and to Whitehead's ''actual occasions''. Rescher's remarks on Whitehead in this respect (PM 112) are somewhat vague and untransparent. In particular, it is unclear why Whitehead's actual occasions create difficulties for his metaphysics. The idea of discrete portions of time does not rule out neuro-cognitive mechanisms generating the impression of continuity. For instance, Pöppel (1997) proposes semantic content as a crucial connecting factor between otherwise separated lumps of now. 3. From Transiency to Freedom It is generally difficult to avoid non-processual, substance-oriented concepts to describe processes, but this can be severely misleading. Considering a process as a sequence of states is an example insofar as a state of a system is a distinctly substantive denotation. On the other hand, there is a very basic problem if one wants to go without any substantive connotations. The core of this problem is the inevitable concreteness of processual experience. Any intention to abstractly conceptualise it is in close vicinity to Whitehead's “fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” In Rescher's words, “we cannot adequately describe (let alone explain) processes in terms of something non-processual any more than we can describe (or explain) spatial relation in nonspatial terms of reference” (PM 29). In this spirit, Rescher uses genuinely processual terms such as stability (PM 108) and transiency (PM 120). James' famous chapter 9 on the “Stream of Thought” in his Principles of Psychology uses these and related concepts extensively. In his particular terms, James refers to stable categories as “substantive parts” of the stream of thought or “nuclei of perception” and to processes connecting stable categories as “transitive parts” or “fringes of perception.” In a non-processual world view, the latter are often regarded as unavoidable by-products of the former, but neither as significant nor as desirable features in themselves.

166 James (1950, pp. 243-244) has some very illustrative remarks addressing this problem: Now it is very difficult, introspectively, to see the transitive parts as what they really are. If they are but flights to a conclusion, stopping them to look at them before the conclusion is reached is really annihilating them. Whilst if we wait till the conclusion be reached, it so exceeds them in vigor and stability that it quite eclipses and swallows them up in its glare. Let anyone try to cut a thought across in the middle and get a look at its section, and he will see how difficult the introspective observation of the transitive acts is. […] The results of this introspective difficulty are baleful. If to hold fast and observe the transitive parts of thought's stream be so hard, then the great blunder to which all schools are liable must be the failure to register them, and the undue emphasizing of the more substantive parts of the stream. So what does process philosophy offer to avoid this “undue emphasizing”? Although Rescher states that “transiency eventually means loss, since the passing of anything that is positive can itself be seen to be a negativity” (PM 120), transiency is also a major and mandatory requirement for anything like emergent novelty or creative activity, fundamental cornerstones of process philosophy. Not even the simplest act of understanding is conceivable without the ephemeral instant of a so-called aha-experience—the hallmark of insight. In terms of a stability analysis of the corresponding process, it is straightforward to identify the mental state at this instant as unstable (Atmanspacher 1992). (Remarkably, scientific approaches dealing with unstable states and transient processes have received greater attention only quite recently in the study of complex systems. These approaches are increasingly and successfully applied to describe neural and cognitive processes.) From this perspective, instability becomes a concept which needs to be welcomed together with transiency and change. “For one must not confuse value with permanency, importance with endurance” (PM 121). Creativity is blocked and novelty is difficult under circumstances in which everything is done to stabilize against change and insure against loss. The dilemma here, of course, is a deeply innate psychological tendency to respond to instability with resistance and fear. In any case, Rescher's remarks about “Transiency and Value” belong to the most inspiring and existentially substantial passages of his book.

167 Could it ever be possible to re-educate human reactions to instabilities? A fascinating move would be to consider unstable states not as hazardous departures from a stable world view, but rather as states enabling liberation from immobile and inflexible categorial schemes. Creativity has a lot to do with liberation anyway. A corresponding conception of freedom is very attractive: it does not contradict any scientific determinism because the fundamental laws of nature do not apply to transient behaviour. This point is largely unexplored in the vast literature on free will as it is conceived in Western civilization. In this regard, Eastern philosophical and spiritual traditions offer a variety of alternatives which await critical discussion. 4. A Person Is More than a Conscious Individual over Time Considering “the utility of the process approach in philosophical psychology” (PM 105), Rescher proposes to deal with personhood at the border between philosophy and psychology. Yet there is more to it, and the influence and significance of sociocultural issues for the formation and definition of personhood is as widely overlooked (or underestimated) as the role of biophysical issues is overstated in many approaches. To some extent, Rescher recognizes the importance of sociocultural factors, particularly the context of interpersonal interactions, as playing an important role in the “self-definitional activity of persons” (PM 110). On the other hand, however, he emphasizes a processual form of dual-aspect monism with respect to the mind-brain issue—“there are not two distinct objects, the brain and the mind; there is simply one item: the complex of processes constituting the brain that has both its physical (brain physiological) and its mental (meaning-geared) dimension. Mental and physical processes are not reducible, the one to the other; they are coordinated as different aspects of one unified whole” (PM 114). Moreover, Rescher understands the mind to “form an integral component of the diversified flow of natural processes—just another part of nature's processual machinations” (PM 114). Apparently, for Rescher, the sociocultural world is an important source of self-definitional, meaningsaturated aspects of personhood that are not reducible to biophysical brain processes, yet these same meaning-saturated aspects of personhood are all part of a single natural order. How can this be? Rescher's response to this perhaps anticipated question is to claim a “priority of mental over physical processes in the epistemic/hermeneutical order” and a “reverse priority in the ontological order, with the roots of

168 mind causally rooted in those of matter” (PM 115). However, this does not clarify the role of sociocultural reality in the formation of personhood, especially since Rescher also claims that personhood has its origins in the ontological order, which for him is the realm of mental/physical processes (see PM 115). One result of these various theoretical moves is effectively to limit the influence of the sociocultural domain of reality to the shaping of a class of meanings from which individuals construct understandings of their experiences. However, when all is said and done, such meanings, understandings, and experiences have no actual ontological significance compared to the natural processes on which they depend in a more thorough-going, ontological way. In this sense, a possibly pernicious dualism that privileges physical, chemical, and biological levels, over the sociocultural level, of reality seems to persist in Rescher's ontology. While Rescher's overall processual holism has much to recommend it with respect to the irreducibility of persons to their obvious physical, chemical, and biological requirements, his typically pragmatic naturalism inevitably erodes the ontological status of the sociocultural domain of reality with respect to its distinctive role in the constitution of personhood. His pragmatism seems ontologically unbalanced to the neglect of what might be considered real, constitutive sociocultural-psychological relations. For example, if one extends the criteria for what is real to include discernible influence in addition to some acceptable method of “observation” (e.g., Bhaskar 1989), room is created at the ontological table for both interactive and constitutive sociocultural-psychological relations. Interactive relations include processes of learning in which the social consequences of actions hold important consequences for one's sense of and beliefs about self. Constitutive relations include those linguistic practices in a particular sociocultural context that are indispensable for meanings and assumptions concerning personhood. From the perspective of theorists who have taken the sociocultural constitution of personhood seriously enough to theorize such relations in detail (e.g., Vygotsky 1986; Harré 1998) it is doubtful that Rescher's pervasive naturalism, restricting sociocultural influence to a solely epistemic or hermeneutic domain, would suffice. 5. Tiered Ontology and Emergent Personhood One possible option is to understand both the sociocultural and the biophysical as ontologically real and interacting within a tiered system of domains of reality. Such a concept can be traced back to the 19th century

169 philosopher Hartmann (1935). Quine (1969) and, more recently, Putnam (1987) have proposed similar approaches in terms of an ontological relativity which allows us to think about different domains of reality as “equally ontological.” This approach rejects any strong reductionist scheme of thinking in which only one (basic) domain (or level) of reality can be of ontological relevance, while all others are reducible to it. As was demonstrated for physical examples by Atmanspacher and Kronz (1998), a particular kind of emergence is a significant feature of an ontology relative to particular domains of reality. In this framework it is assumed that emergent states and properties of a system cannot be strictly derived from “lower level” states and properties. “Lower level” states and properties provide necessary but not sufficient conditions for “higher level” states and properties. Concerning the processual emergence of persons, corresponding arguments have recently been proposed by Emmeche et al. (1997, 2000) and Martin and Sugarman (1999, 2002). They treat persons as biophysical individuals whose active immersion and participation in the sociocultural world (from birth) allows them to develop as persons equipped with selfunderstanding, agentic capability, and personal identities that give a psychological connectedness to their lives. Although there is much to be worked out in these models of emergent personhood, they seem to make useful distinctions between sociocultural and biophysical relations and processes with respect to the emergence of personhood in ontogenesis, without falling into substance forms of dualism. In such alternative processual systems, processes and relations of meaning at sociocultural and psychological domains of reality are not ontologically subordinated to those natural and evolving processes and relations that form their undisputed biophysical requirements. And yet, there is no mysterious mind outside of these sociocultural and natural, physical processes, and both sociocultural and psychological domains of reality are clearly embedded within, yet not reducible to, the biophysical domains of reality. Returning to the important matter of time, many theorists of personhood have considered psychological continuity or connectedness as the central criterion of personhood. The basic idea in such Lockean approaches is the notion of “person stage,” defined as a momentary slice of time in the history of a person (e.g., Parfit 1984). A series of person stages is psychologically continuous if later psychological states of the series develop, in certain characteristic ways, from earlier states of the series. This form of psychological continuity has been held to occur across memory, agency, reason, intentionality, self-consciousness, reflection, and

170 experience, amongst others. Of course, the obvious critique of continuity theories of personhood is that they are overly simplified, and seem to assume the exact kind of temporal-experiential unifier they are intended to clarify—a problem that also can bedevil process perspectives such as Rescher's when applied to persons. For many, this problem has been seen to arise because of the assumption in continuity (process) theories that the locus of personhood is intrapersonal. Alternatively, both biophysical and sociocultural extensions to the basic notion of psychological continuity have been proposed. For example, Strawson (1959) argued that persons, as basic particulars of the human world, are bearers of both physical and psychological properties. For Strawson, personal concepts like identity and self require the embodiment of a biophysical human being active in the physical and social world arrayed in time and space. Others, like Taylor (1989) and Harré (1998) have extended the sociocultural bases of personhood to include historical, cultural, and moral requirements that are to be added to the criteria of psychological continuity or connectedness and physical embodiment. For these theorists, persons are unique embodied beings, with distinctive life experiences, agentic capability, and self-understanding who may be called to moral account as responsible actors. More recently, Martin, Sugarman, and Thompson (2003) have defined persons as embodied beings with social and personal identity, self, and agency, and provided additional definitions for the various aspects of persons thus defined that emphasize the historical, sociocultural, and moral constitution of persons. Such persons are capable of extending backward (memory) and forward (anticipation/purpose) in psychological and physical time, possessing commitments and pursuing projects that give a rich continuity to their lives. It is this kind of personhood that is truly worth having, and it is this kind of personhood that processual theorists like Rescher always should have in sight as a complex whole to which their talk about processes somehow must aspire. Most importantly, when such a view is taken, it seems to require that human history, society, and culture be granted a constitutive reality that physicalist accounts of personhood cannot sanction. Processual pragmatists, like Rescher, obviously want to have their physicalist cake and their sociocultural icing, which is good. However, the icing may need to work its way a bit more firmly into the rest of the cake.

171 References Atmanspacher, H. (1992). “Categoreal and acategoreal representation of knowledge.” Cognitive Systems, 3, 259-288. Atmanspacher, H. (1997). “Dynamical entropy in dynamical systems.” In H. Atmanspacher and E. Ruhnau (Eds.). Time, Temporality, Now (pp. 327-346). Berlin: Springer. Atmanspacher, H., and Kronz, F. (1998). “Many realisms.” Acta Polytechnica Scandinavica Ma-91, 31-43. Bhaskar, R. (1989). Reclaiming reality: A critical introduction to contemporary philosophy. London: Verso. Emmeche, C., Koppe, S., and Stjernfelt, F. (1997). “Explaining emergence—towards an ontology of levels.” Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 28, 83119. Emmeche, C., Koppe, S., and Stjernfelt, F. (2000). “Levels, emergence, and three versions of downword causation.” In P. B. Andersen, C. Emmeche, N. O. Finnemann, and P. V. Christiansen (Eds.), Downward Causation: Minds, Bodies, and Matter (pp. 13-34). Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press. Gustafson, K. (1997). Lectures on Computational Fluid Dynamics, Mathematical Physics, and Linear Algebra (pp. 61-68). Singapore: World Scientific. Harré, R. (1998). The Singular Self: An Introduction to the Psychology of Personhood. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Hartmann, N. (1935). Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie. Berlin: deGruyter. James, W. (1950). Principles of Psychology I, New York: Dover. Mahler, G. (1999). “Temporal nonlocality.” In H. Atmanspacher, U. Müller-Herold, and A. Amann (Eds.). On Quanta, Mind, and Matter (pp. 83-101). Dordrecht: Kluwer. Martin, J., and Sugarman, J. (1999). The Psychology of Human Possibility and Constraint. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Martin, J., and Sugarman, J. (2002). “Agency and soft determinism.” In H. Atmanspacher and R. Bishop (Eds.). Between Chance and Choice (pp. 407424). Thorverton: Imprint Academic. Martin, J., Sugarman, J., and Thompson, J. (2003). Psychology and the Question of Agency. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Misra, B., and Prigogine, I. (1983). “Irreversibility and nonlocality.” Letters in Mathematical Physics 7, 421-429. Parfit, D. (1984). Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pöppel, E. (1997). “A hierarchical model of temporal perception.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 1, 56-61. Primas, H. (1992). “Time-asymmetric phenomena in biology.” Open Systems & Information Dynamics 1, 3-34. Putnam, H. (1987). The Many Faces of Realism. LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court. Quine, W.V.O. (1969). “Ontological relativity.” In Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (pp. 26-68). New York: Columbia University Press. Strawson, P. (1959). Individuals. Routledge: New York. Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

172 Vygotski, L. (1986). Thought and Language. Translated by A. Kozulin. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

VII. PROCESS LOGIC AND EPISTEMOLOGY Jacques Riche (Leuven)

Abstract In this chapter on knowledge, truth, epistemology and logic, N. Rescher remarks that, in opposition to the process oriented view of things, Western thought has been dominated by a static and substantialist view of truth and knowledge. Philosophical or scientific inquiry should provide us with true facts about the world, the world as it is, and not the world as it is said to be. And the world as it is is a world of processes. Whitehead already noted that the tacit assumption of a necessary static spatio-temporal and physical form of order had hampered Western philosophy although the evolution of science had not shown that there was such a necessity. In contrast, process has to be understood through the interweaving of data, form, transition, and issue into new data which characterize each unit of fact. If process is fundamental to actuality, each ultimate individual fact must be describable as process. We follow and illustrate several of N. Rescher's suggestions and remarks about language, logic and mathematics before focusing on the question of time and motion, following the lead of natural philosophy, from Newton to Whitehead and Milne.

In this chapter on knowledge, truth, epistemology and logic, Rescher remarks that, in opposition to the process oriented view of things, Western thought has been dominated by a static and substantialist view of truth and knowledge. Philosophical or scientific inquiry should provide us with true facts about the world, the world as it is, which is a world of processes, and not the world as it is said to be1.

1

This is a recurrent theme in N. Rescher's philosophy. See, for example, CI.

174 Whitehead2 already noted that the tacit assumption of a necessary static spatio-temporal and physical form of order had hampered Western philosophy although the evolution of science had not shown that there was such a necessity. He also recognized that, in contrast, process had to be understood through the interweaving of data, form, transition, and issue into new data which characterize each unit of fact. Moreover, if process is fundamental to actuality, each ultimate individual fact must be describable as process. Following Rescher, the “crux of process epistemology lies in its […] insistence on seeing the enterprise of rational inquiry—be it in natural science or elsewhere—as being a process” (PM 140), whereas, traditionally, the theory of knowledge has tried to attain a fixed and definite truth of things. Accordingly, we must admit our inability to obtain definitive truth in scientific matters because science is a process, the process of scientific inquiry, rather than a product. Rather than a detailed analysis of all of Rescher's arguments in this chapter, we will rely on various of his remarks about language, logic and mathematics to suggest ways of illustrating, understanding and supporting his position. Several of Rescher's allusions to the limitations of natural language in dealing with processes and an ever-changing reality will first lead us to consider some recent work in linguistics that uses a notion of process in the analysis of natural language. Then, from a semantic theory based on a notion of event inspired by Whitehead's and Russell's discussions of the notions of time point, event and interval, we will briefly consider the mathematical language through a branch of topology whose basic ideas derive from the same intuitions and through some idea of process in mathematics. From Rescher's argument relying on Zeno's Arrow paradox to favour a logic with truth-value gaps, we will consider the question, central for process thought, of the relationship between time, motion and change that Zeno's paradox raises. Time, points and motion will then be met in Newton's Calculus, that marvellous tool to put nature to the question, as the mathematician J. J. Sylvester wrote, but also the place where some notion of time disappears from mathematics and physics. Finally, we will concentrate on a contribution to natural philosophy and epistemology of physics of the first half of last century that is based on the communication

2

Whitehead, 1938, p. 88.

175 of information in a communal setting and which illustrates rather closely Rescher's views on process and communication. 1. Processes in Natural Language Semantics The “bias toward static fixity and inert definiteness” (PM 124) that Rescher sees in the tradition of theorizing about logic and language has been recognized in recent studies in the semantics of natural language. It would be wrong to think that our natural languages are poorly equipped to do justice to a process view of the world. Indeed, many of them developed rather rich categorizations and structures that allow their users to describe or to refer easily to changing situations in a changing world. In the semantic analysis of natural language, the temporal ontology implicit in our language uses has often been explained in terms of Vendler's verbs typology (a typology that can be traced back to Antiquity) and aspectual classes, and analyzed in terms of Reichenbach's semantics of tenses. While tenses give the chronological ordering of events with respect to some utterance situation, aspects characterize the type of events. These can be, either progressive (i.e. an event going on), or perfect, (i.e. an event completed). In his typology, Vendler3 distinguishes four types of aspectual classes introduced by verbs: states, activities, accomplishments and achievements. The last three belong to the category of events, i.e. things that occur and induce a change of state. An activity is an event that takes time, which lasts between a start and an end. An achievement is an event that takes no time. It is instantaneous, punctual, has no starting point, no duration. An accomplishment is an activity that ends in an achievement. Vendler obtained these categories from an analysis in terms of the presence or absence of some processual or definite character of the situation referred to by the sentence. One characteristics of process verbs is that they can take the progressive form, expressing that something is going on. H. Verkuyl4 has proposed a typology that makes explicit use of a type 'process' in which processes share some properties of states and events. He criticizes Vendler's typology, noting, though, that he could not

3 4

Vendler, 1967. Verkuyl, H., “Aspectual classes and aspectual composition”, Linguistics and Philosophy, 12 (1989), pp. 39-94.

176 benefit from all the later developments of linguistics. Indeed, if one wants to analyse language with respect to its way of expressing aspectuality, one has to take into account various parameters like whole or partial truth, (in)completeness, (in)determinacy, and various levels of analysis like those of verb phrases (the verb and its complements), noun phrases and sentences. These are the carriers of aspectual information. They provide a finer analysis that takes into account the information expressed by the various constituents of a sentence. Depending on the values of the features5 that characterize these carriers, three aspectual classes that combine verbal and nominal information are determined: states, processes, and events6. In this linguistic context, the aspectual class of process reflects some dynamic aspect in the situation described by a sentence, that something is going on. In general, no further precision on the exact meaning of process seems required by the linguists who take it as a basic ontological category. 2. Event Semantics When studying language at the level of discourse, the semantics usually relies on Reichenbach's analysis7 of temporal relations based on various orderings of speech time, reference time and event time. A. Prior, who wanted to build a tense logic that accounts for valid reasoning based on tensed statements, objected to Reichenbach's simple approach and added multiple reference points. It is interesting to note that Prior8 also wanted to refute the arguments of McTaggart who had proposed an a priori proof that not only time, but also space and matter are not real. The traditional formal analysis of the semantics of natural language based on a truth-conditional model-theoretic semantics defines truth and satisfaction directly on natural language sentences or on their first or higher-order translation. This presupposes a direct correspondence between the sentences and some model of the world.

5

One feature determines the presence or absence of a specified quantity introduced by the noun phrases and another distinguishes stative from nonstative dynamic verbs in verb phrases.

6

Several other authors have also used this partition into three classes.

7

Reichenbach, 1947.

8

A. Prior, Past, Present and Future, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1967.

177 Nevertheless, it has been recognized that this traditional approach is not sufficient to explain the dynamic aspect of meaning in its full sense. There are many reasons. One reason is that this approach concentrates only on the sentential level of language use and that it does not capture the contextual role that sentences play in a discourse. Another reason is that classical first-order logic, which is monotonic, cannot represent evolving and changing knowledge or information adequately. In addition, with respect to this dynamic aspect and the necessity to rely on tensed sentences to analyse it, an approach like that of Prior that relies on time points as reference points and evaluation points (truth-value at a point), is easier to manage from a logical point of view than an approach based on intervals. The later are vague; they do not allow a clear treatment of truth-values and, in any case, require starting and ending points. Recognizing these shortcomings, H. Kamp9 has proposed a discourse representation theory, a semantics based on events, which insists particularly on the role of time in temporal relations and temporal anaphora. His semantics integrates the dynamic aspects of meaning construction in the traditional model-theoretic approach, no longer at the sentence level, but in a complete piece of discourse. This semantics that relies on an ontology of points, events and intervals and that contains most of the typological distinctions referred to above is also a theory of linguistic knowledge representation and of linguistic communication. In Kamp's theory, it is possible to talk of durationless events and instants. They are constructs of some sort, built out of elements that have themselves some duration. In addition to events, there are states. In the theory of discourse representation, events involve some change: the occurrence of an event implies that some condition obtains until the end of the event. On the other side, states do not involve change: they are the continuation of the same condition. Events and states are considered as basic, and event and state sentences express essentially the same semantic structure. Events are not reduced to times or inversely though. Events are ontologically irreducible primitive entities. The ontology of this semantics accommodates also time points and intervals. Instants are the “times” that are “atomic”; intervals are the “non-atomic” times. Events can be defined either in terms of times; either the reverse or they are irreducible. This indefiniteness is dealt with following the Russell-Wiener's solution to the problem of making temporally extended entities out of durationless

9

Kamp and Reyle, 1993. About events, see A. Prior, op. cit., Ch. 1.

178 elements and reciprocally. N. Wiener10 showed indeed how to build a linearly ordered temporal structure of durationless atomic elements (i.e., instants) of a linear order out of elements that have themselves some duration in an underlying structure. From some set of temporal intervals of that linear order, all related by overlap and precedence relations, an instant can be defined as a subset of maximal pairwize overlapping elements of this set. Roughly speaking, an instant is determined by minimising the intervals obtained by maximising the intersections of intervals that share a common temporal part. This theory provides an analysis of processes not only at the sentential level but also at the discourse level. One same structure serves as context for the sentence to interpret next and as content of the sentence already interpreted. This interpretation is performed by successive introduction of reference markers, also called discourse referents that serve as antecedents of anaphoric expressions in subsequent discourse. In this way, a processual and dynamic perspective is introduced in the semantics of natural language. This semantic account of the dynamic aspects of discourse illustrates again the importance of the notion of process and proposes ways to deal with the problematic notions of time points and intervals. 3. Process in Mathematics The Wiener-Russell's solution is related to the problem of doing geometry without a notion of point, an idea of Whitehead that is at the origin of point-free topology, a mathematical theory that could appear relevant in the context of process thought. Not only temporal points, but also spatial points are problematic. For example, let us try to think about Zeno's paradoxes without using the notion of point in space. We may see space or, at least, our sensations provide us with some form of perceptible extension that we commonly call space; but we do not see nor perceive dimensionless points. If we want to study space as it is given by our perceptions, how are we going to describe these perceptions mathematically with a notion of dimensionless point? Pointless or pointfree topology11 is thought to be closer to the natural intuition of space in 10

Wiener, 1914.

11

A topology on a set X is a collection of subsets of X, including the empty set and X, which is closed under finite intersections and arbitrary unions. A set X on which such a topology is specified is a topological space. The collection of subsets of X

179 physics than the usual set theoretical conception. Topology is that branch of mathematics that studies the notions of continuity and of neighbourhood. Traditionally, one starts with some set of points and some relation between them. In the new perspective as first worked out by Stone who had the idea of describing space in terms of observable quantities rather than in terms of ideal points, one starts with a notion of concrete observable from which the notion of point is defined as a collection of observables. Considering Wiener's solution at a time when mathematics was no longer the main of his interests, Russell remarked that these ideas could also be important for physics. Nevertheless, in order to construct the mathematical notion of instant from that of event, some hypotheses like the well-ordering of events, i.e. the axiom of choice, are required, “the kind of assumptions one would naturally make does not prove that instants can be constructed12.” In a letter to K. Menger, another pioneer of point-free topology, Husserl refers to the “necessary turn” in mathematics “toward an ultimate fondamentation which goes back to the primordial sources of its concepts in intuition—in other words, toward a phenomenological foundation13.” Point-free topology whose original intuition comes from the relations between perceived space and its mathematical description opens new perspectives for the investigation of the notions of space, continuum and even Calculus and processes. What could be a process in mathematics? For Whitehead14, in any existence there is a creative activity in data, process and issue into datum for further process. The essence of existence lies in the transition from datum to issue. Data condition the form of processes; and existence cannot be abstracted from process; they presuppose each other. In order to understand existence, potentiality is essential because potentiality in immediate fact constitute the driving force of process. According to Whitehead, the error of mathematics was to introduce a doctrine of form devoid of life and motion. Mathematics is indeed concerned with certain that belong to the topology are the open sets. Note that the notion of observable mentioned in the text can now have a rather abstract and technical character. 12

First, in Our Knowledge of the External World and, later, in “On order in Time”, 1936, reprinted in Russell, 1956, pp. 347-363. Note of the editor p. 345.

13

Husserl quoted in K. Menger, Selected Papers in Logic and Foundations, Didactics, Economics, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1979, p. 215.

14

Whitehead, 1938, pp. 96, 92-93.

180 forms of process issuing into forms that are components of further process. The mathematical modes of fusion (in the arithmetical operations of addition, multiplication, series…) are forms of process in which the agents dictate the form of composition that produce the issue. “All mathematical notions have reference to process of intermingling.” Numbers illustrate how Whitehead analyses a form of transition in arithmetic and the following example shows how arithmetical statements refer to special forms of process, issuing in a group characterized by some definite arithmetical character. We say that “2x3 is 6” is a tautology. It is a process whose issue is an entity with character “6.” With respect to the abstraction “2x3 is 6,” “2x3” indicates a form of fluent process and “6” indicates a characterization of the completed fact. This view of process in mathematics was not uncommon at the end of the 19th century. For example, J. B. Shaw15, obviously influenced by Whitehead16, claims that in the foundations of mathematics, we find, first, the elements used to build mathematical structures, and, second, the processes by which they are built. “The life of mathematics is the derivation of one thing from others, the transition from data to things that follow according to given processes of transitions.” These ideas are directly inspired by the Ausdehnungslehre of H. Grassmann17, “the theory of extensive forms,” that strongly influenced Whitehead in Book I of his Treatise on Universal Algebra and in his later philosophy. Grassmann himself had been influenced by Leibniz’ Analysis situs, published in 1833, a ‘geometry of situation’, in the ancestor of topology. 4. Indeterminacy and Logic If the natural and mathematical languages allow us to talk about processes, is there any specific logic required to control our reasoning about processes? According to Rescher, Aristotle's thesis of the truth-value indetermination of future contingencies and the indeterminacy that applies

15

Shaw, 1907, p. 75.

16

Whitehead, A. N., A Treatise on Universal Algebra, Cambridge, C.U.P., 1898.

17

Grassmann, H., Die Lineale Ausdehnungslehre, (1844) “the theory of linear form”, i.e. the set of all elements into which some generating element transforms itself by continuous change.

181 to anything which is coming into being or passing away into non-existence shows the advantage of a process oriented approach in metaphysics. Zeno's paradoxes are examples where this indetermination applies. In addition, Rescher claims that these situations and paradoxes have imposed Aristotle to make exception to his original substantialist position. Although talking of states while process is continuous rather than discrete could be misleading, viewing process as the passage from one state to the next raises the same kind of problems as those raised by Zeno's paradoxes which are about time and motion. Under some explanation of these paradoxes, they mean that either we could well be involved in a regressio ad infinitum, or we could have to be able to perform infinitely many steps instantaneously in order to reach the next state. Zeno's Arrow paradox intends to show that if time is discrete, made up of indivisible moments or instants, motion is not possible. The problem is the nature of motion. If no change can take place at a temporal instant, then there is no motion at any given instant. Motion cannot be the addition of instantaneous states of rest. We could first think that Rescher mentions the Arrow paradox because it easily directs us to a preference for a logic that allows truthvalues gaps. Nevertheless, Zeno's paradoxes are paradigmatic of a sort of problem that has been with us ever since he devised them. One answer to the paradoxes could be that, as such, they are no real problem. The problem is rather the logical confusion they create. Everybody understands the physicist who refers to the 'instantaneous velocity' of a moving body or to the orbiting satellite in 'continuous free fall' because everybody can understand the elementary laws of classical physics. We know that a moving body only moves over a certain laps of time in some interval of space and that it cannot move at an instant over no interval because there is no such thing as time points and dimensionless intervals in the real world. Nevertheless, when we start wondering about natural phenomena, mixing ordinary observational language with theoretical constructions, the problems show up. Epistemology, logic and ontology then enter the scene because we raise mathematical, geometrical or logical abstract questions. For example, what happens when the body stops moving, changing its state of motion for a state of rest. We know that the transition is not instantaneous. However, where is the crossing point from moving to non-moving? Is there anything happening at a durationless point? Zeno tells us that although the arrow moves at each point along its trajectory, at each point it has no time to move and hence, it doesn't move at all times. Acknowledging that there is motion would lead to

182 contradiction and, as a way out, to the rejection of the consistency thesis that underlies classical logic. Rescher prefers to admit truth-values gaps, a position he always defended although, at times and places, one could have expected some stronger position. For example, discussing Bochvar's threevalued logic, he sees the third value “not as much intermediate between truth and falsity but as paradoxical or even meaningless,” this meaninglessness being “what is at issue in the classical semantical paradoxes” (TPL67). The existence of contradictions could lead to the adoption of a paraconsistent logic in which, for example, the principle of non-contradiction or the law of substitution of equivalents do not always hold but which can deal with contradictory statements over situations or objects without collapsing18. The admission of contradictions could also open the door to some fuzzy logic with degrees of truth and hence, probably, problematic degrees of reality. Nevertheless, the existence of contradictions that are even found in Newtons's Calculus, is a question that should be elucidated. In another of Zeno's paradoxes, Achilles' paradox, if time is continuous, that is, infinitely divisible, motion is also impossible. Here, the problem is that of determining a distance with respect to time, and to move through infinitely many points. At first, our representation of the problem leads us to suppose that Achilles, when he is infinitely close to the Tortoise, performs infinitely many actions, which, at the limit, are simultaneous. For Whitehead19 and others, following G. Cantor's work, Zeno made an error because he had no mathematical notion of infinite series. The problem simply collapses into that of two converging infinite series of time intervals, which have a finite sum, and there is no paradox. This is a classical but not entirely satisfactory answer to the logical problems that these paradoxes raise20. In the same perspective, the semantic paradoxes like the Liar can also be mentioned. These paradoxes are of a different kind. They have to do with truth, truth-values and references of various sorts of statements. Tarski's theory of truth has offered some solution to these semantic paradoxes. There, a truth predicate for a language is defined and a distinction is made between language and metalanguage in a hierarchy of

18

Rescher and Brandom, 1980.

19

Whitehead, 1929.

20

See Code, 1985, chapter 3 for an extended discussion of Zeno's paradoxes.

183 languages. In his theory of truth, which improves on that of Tarski, S. Kripke21 uses a value “undetermined” in a three-valued logic that allows truth-value gaps. Of course, this is not the last word on the solution of these paradoxes, assuming they can ever be solved completely22. Nevertheless, truth-value indeterminacy simply seen as a “useful mediating device” may not be entirely satisfying though. A distinction must also be made between a system of pure logic that investigates formal structures and a system of applied logic that investigates various forms of reasoning and inferences, not a priori, but as they are used in various fields of the concrete reasoning experience and based on abstract structures appropriate for specific kinds of inferential mechanisms. An example, Intuitionistic Logic, a logic which, it is interesting to note, emphasizes the aprioricity of time23, rejects the principles of excluded middle, double negation and reductio ad absurdum because they are not appropriate in an account of the constructive way of thinking. Similarly, several of the usual principles of classical logic may not be appropriate either to process reasoning or to reason correctly about processes. In the context of a process epistemology that makes room for subjectivity and even intersubjectivity as we will see below, another option could be Discursive Logic. This logic considers discourse as produced by various participants, each producing his piece of information, itself consistent, but which could be contradictory with the information produced by other participants. 5. Time and Motion Rescher's reference to Aristotle and Zeno's paradoxes takes us back to the beginnings of Western philosophy. Following him on this road, we consider briefly how the problems related to the notions of space, motion, change, time and time point that are related in an essential way to processes originated and how they finally found a solution in Newton's Calculus, but at a price.

21

Kripke, 1975.

22

Many other solutions or approximations of a solution have been proposed, based on partial worlds, speech acts theory, truth theory based on non-well-founded set theory etc. See, for example, J. Barwise and J. Etchemendy, 1987 and R. Martin, 1984.

23

Brouwer, 1913.

184 From the Ancients to Galileo and Newton, the question about nature has passed from “does anything change?” to “how and how much do things change?” The “apeiron” of Anaximander was without limits, undetermined, principle at the origin or beginning of everything, generating power, active, determining, whole cause, larger than the spatiotemporal limits of the world (or, as others maintained, an infinity of worlds) in process of becoming and perishing. In the “apeiron,” the generation and destruction of worlds involves necessarily motion. The “apeiron” has a sort of vitality submitted to eternal motion24. Discussing the nature of the universe, Aristotle25 notes that it follows from his assumptions related to movement that there is “a primary body, something else beyond earth, fire, air and water, [the ancients gave it a name] “aither,” derived from the fact that it runs always for an eternity of time.” With Aristotle, nature is seen as motion since, as he noted, if we ignore motion we can know nothing about nature. Aristotle's theory of motion is based on the system of natural places towards which bodies are moving naturally. Gravity, for example, is the tendency of the heavy bodies to reach their natural place, the centre of the world. Universal space constitutes a static system of all these natural places that differ from each other by their distance to the centre of the world. The relativity of motion of perfect bodies results from the equivalence of all points that constitute space where that motion takes place. Space is homogeneous, and since the behaviour does not change from one point to the next, change has to be measured through the change of distance from that body with respect to some other one considered as reference. The investigations of space, time and motion by the ancients found their culminating achievement in Leibniz and Newton's Calculus that allowed physics to develop as the science that tells us what the world is and how it is so. Rescher writes that the fluidity of the analogue, continuous character of a processual nature is captured by differential equations. This statement raises questions because, in the development of Calculus, we find a sort of reasoning similar to that used in Zeno's Arrow. Actually, any situation requiring differential equations for his description could imply some sort of paradox.

24

Aristotle, Physics, VIII, 1, 250b.

25

Aristotle, De Caelo, I, 3, 270b.

185 Although differential calculus is still our best tool for analysis, it does not take us close to the real nature of natural objects but in addition, it is contradictory. What is again problematic is precisely the notion of point. In his study of motion, Galileo had first considered the trajectories of moving bodies as an infinite set of points. Later on, he defined the behaviour, the instantaneous velocity of moving bodies, as varying from one point to the next in a law that relates velocity to time. One of Newton's26 achievements is the so-called “geometrization of time” in his Calculus of fluxions, a calculus based on our intuition of motion. His perspective is new, and his method, he claims, is phenomenological, based on observation alone, excluding any a priori. In his famous words, “Absolute space, by its nature and with no relation to anything exterior remains identical to itself and with no motion.” Relative space is a dimension or mobile measure of absolute space that our senses determine through its relation to the bodies and that is usually taken for the motionless space. Time plays a role here, since a state of rest lasts for some time and motion implies a change of place in time. These relative times can be measured in counting events that recur at regular intervals. However, these intervals can only be measured using other intervals, implying a regressio ad infinitum. In order to accommodate these relative times, Newton supposes an absolute time with respect to which events can have some duration independently of the succession of local events: “Absolute time true and mathematical flows uniformly with no relation to anything exterior and is called duration.” Relative time, apparent and ordinary, is a sensible and external measure of duration with the help of motion and is usually used in place of true time27. In his “De Quadratura,” in order to illustrate his analytical method with some typical problem, Newton28 shows that the difficulties of his position can be reduced to two problems. (i) Given the length of space continuously (i.e. at every [instant of] time), to find the speed of motion at any time, and (ii) given the speed of motion continuously, to find the length of space described at any time proposed. The answer to these questions is Calculus, infinitesimal and integral.

26

Newton, De Quadratura; Method of Series and Fluxions.

27

Newton, Principia, Book I, Scholium.

28

Newton, “Introducing the revised De Quadratura” [1, 2, §2], p. 73 and “The Method of Series and Fluxions”, pp. 107-111.

186 Considering quantities “as though they were generated by continuous increase in the manner of a space which a moving object describes in its course29,” Newton applies the infinitesimal calculus to velocity with respect to time: “Mathematical quantities I here consider not as consisting of indivisibles, either parts least possible or infinitely small ones, but as described by a continuous motion. Lines are described as generated through the continuous motion of points; […] time through continuous flux, […] These geneses take place in the physical world and are daily enacted in the motion of the bodies visible before our eyes.” Moreover, he found “a method of determining quantities out of the speeds of motion or increment by which they are generated, and naming these speeds of motion or increment 'fluxions' of the quantities generated and the quantities so born 'fluents' […]. Fluxions can be expressed and measured either by the increments of fluent quantities begotten in individual moments of time or by any other quantities whatever proportional to those just barely nascent increments. Fluxions are very closely near as the parts of their fluents begotten in the very smallest equal particles of time.” Nevertheless, Newton remarks that we can have no estimate of time in any other way as measured by some local uniform motion. For that reason, he does not consider time as such but he supposes that some quantity must grow by some uniform fluxion with respect to which any other quantities are measured and that he will then consider it, by analogy, as if it was time. Therefore, it is not necessarily time as such that he considers, but some quantity whose fluxion allows measuring time30. Berkeley31 criticizes Newton's method of fluxions because he introduces the idea of compensation of errors to avoid the contradiction between the errors in the foundation of his method and the fact that it yields correct results. Berkeley talks of the “ghosts of departed quantities.” In order to explain the arguments of his method, Newton relies on ultimate ratios of nascent and vanishing finite quantities when they approach their limits. The increments are neither zero nor finite quantities. For him, the last ratio of vanishing quantities must be understood “as the ratio of quantities not before they vanish, nor afterwards, but with which they

29

Idem.

30

Newton, Principia, Book I, Scholium.

31

Berkeley, 1734.

187 vanish.” The ultimate magnitudes are not indivisible but diminishable without limit. From then on, the development of Analysis will give the classical conception of motion its most achieved expression in analytical mechanics where the behaviour of a moving body varies from one point to the next, speed varies and motion is characterized by acceleration. In classical physics, the position of any object of a system can be determined at each particular time. However, as soon as we rely on statistical mechanics, we only have the probability of some possible states of the system. Still more, with quantum mechanics, we are left with some abstract function that gives us various possible states of a system. If the determinist world of classical mechanics seems still close to the world we can observe, it is no longer the case in the other two systems of description and explanation where theories are less dependent on observation and experience. It should be stressed that if classical determinism implies that from the knowledge of some state of a system at some moment all states of the system can be predicted, this suppose also a complete precision of the knowledge of that state. However, experience will never provide an absolute degree of precision to the observations32. The Newtonian differential conception was supposed to give that complete description of the world. Indeed, the laws of nature were thought of as being universal since the motion of any body at any time and any place in space could be, in principle, uniquely and precisely determined by the analytical methods. Hence, classical physics considers reality as fixed in its properties and if this reality can be determined at some time, it can also be determined at all time. Nevertheless, time and motion, are no longer necessary and are no longer considered in the Calculus. The 32

Ladrière, 1970, gives an interesting account of the description of nature in terms of process. At this point, it should be noted that even though our intuition makes us think that the world is continuous, if it is really the case, in no case would this require necessarily the use of differential calculus and reliance on the real numbers. In any case a discrete world and integers would do. It should also be clear that the image of the world that physics and mathematics give us is not unique. One often talks of the picture of the world of physics or mathematics, but almost never raises the question of what we exactly know about the world. We can know very diverse things and in very different ways depending on our a priori choices or preferences. Some may choose a discrete view, for example, and rebuild the world with cellular automata, offering A New Kind of Science, to mention Wolfram's latest book.

188 arguments based on time and motion that Newton used to found his Calculus do not necessarily apply to questions concerning them anymore. This is precisely what Whitehead reproached to Newton: his description of matter by abstracting it from time, considering matter “at an instant” and preventing then any idea of process. “If process be fundamental, such abstraction is erroneous”33. One could say that with Newton's theory of fluxions a breaking point is reached. If a process is analyzed, then either, as Rescher seems to imply, Calculus is the tool to analyse it, or, as Whitehead claims, it is there that Newton missed the point (so to speak!). W. R. Hamilton's34 proposal to found algebra on the pure intuition of time is an attempt to reintroduce time in mathematics. Not time as an analogy used to illustrate the rules of algebra, but time as coextensive to algebra. For Hamilton, pure time is the pure Kantian form of intuition, not the apparent time of the objects perceived or the external chronology of the temporal order of events. As such, pure time can serve as foundation of mathematics. It is because they are objects of thought, i.e. intuitioned by a mental act, and because they exist in the mind, that the moments of time exist. That minimal objective existence is necessary if one wants to build numbers from moments of time. In order to serve as basis for the construction of mathematical objects, time must be separated from the objective order of appearances. Moments of time must be objects of thought. Thereby, time remains objective but it is in no way determined by the objective order of events. Having explained the process by which mathematical objects (numbers) that have no necessary spatio-temporal existence can be constructed on this intuition of time, Hamilton continues to remark that our knowledge of time seems to contain more than pure order only, or progression, because time can refer to events that happen or have happened, orders beyond control of our will, while algebra is based on the purely mental idea of order which can be changed arbitrarily. In algebra and arithmetic, the mind creates its own order and progressions at will. Mathematical time is thus a creation more subjective than the time of perception. Science involves observation, reasoning and interpretation. But Hamilton also remarked that science refers not only to appearances and to thoughts, but also to believed realities, to existences outside ourselves,

33

Whitehead, 1938, pp. 88-89.

34

Hamilton, Algebra as the science of pure time, 1844, in Hamilton, 1967.

189 existences whose evidence escapes logical or mathematical proof and which are dynamical powers35. In spite of the Romantic influence of Kant and Coleridge and although they were not systematically elaborated, Hamilton's philosophical thoughts deserve some attention in the context of process philosophy. 6. Epistemology and Physics Rescher notes that although Aristotle considered knowledge as part of a praxis, in the tradition, it has often been seen as substantial, a collection of things, the facts. Nevertheless, knowledge comes from some inquiring process, not from the collection of ready-made facts. Rescher thus proposes that the appropriate theory of knowledge, rather than a representational or a constructive one, is the causal-commerce theory, which sees true thought and its object as two phases of a process of mutual interconnection where the external order of nature and the internal order of mind-body are aligned. We can find some illustration of these ideas of Rescher in the context of early 20th century British natural philosophy (Whitehead, Milne, Whitrow, and other philosophers scientists). One author, M. Johnson36, proposes non-classical definitions of scientific knowledge and ways to test its truthfulness. Relying on E. A. Milne's Kinematic Relativity37, he insists that scientific knowledge is not a “thing” but a formal structure, a tendency of reasoning upon formal relationships rather than on some correspondence with any imagined external world. Truth is not a property of knowledge possessed by some scientist but depends on the process of communicating results; it consists in chains of arguments linked by communicability. According to Milne, the notion of physical space has no meaning and any attempt to describe in terms of phenomena what is described by mathematics always reaches “fantastic and extravagant conclusions.” An example is general relativity that has endowed space with physical properties. In his approach, time and space are very different elements. Time is basic; space is in some way a construction.

35

Hamilton quoted by Graves, in Hankins, 1980, pp. 289-290.

36

Johnson, 1946.

37

Milne, E. A., Relativity, Gravitation and World Structure, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1935.

190 Milne's notion of event relies explicitly on that of Whitehead and his rationalist approach relies on Descartes. In his theory, he tries to develop a basis to describe natural phenomena and to account for their governing laws, making no hypotheses about the coincidence of these laws with the empirical laws of nature. His physics is purely a priori, axiomatic and deductive and intends to explain phenomena in deriving their laws by deductive logical processes. The world can be soundly described before any sort of experience, on the sole basis of mathematics. Science is possible without specific appeal to empirical laws if, at each stage, we say exactly what we mean and state the precise means by which we become aware of what we are trying to communicate. This is Milne's definition of the “branch of metaphysics we call epistemology38.” More precisely, science is possible without appeal to contingent laws provided its quantitative statements are precisely explained in terms of operations carried out and communicated to other observers who can then duplicate the same observations. In his view, the essence of relativity is as follows: one observer from his own description of a phenomenon can predict quantitatively an independent observer's description of the same phenomenon. We can say that the universe is rational, and thus intelligible, because we may infer all relations that exist between the quantitative aspects of a phenomenon as soon as we are aware of these aspects. Appeal to experience happens only when an observer identifies his symbols with nature, having “weaved strands of possibility into a texture,” teleologically guided in his work by the prospect of reaching something of interest, suitable for comparison with nature39.

38

Milne, 1943.

39

The theory starts with some idealized observer who can experience the flow of events in his consciousness. This 'ego' is a perceiving being whose sensations, the events in his consciousness, can arrange themselves in a single linear order, a directed time-order. Correlating this order with the real numbers, he defines a clock. This ego can also perceive and send light signals to which he assigns two numbers, t1, the time of sending a signal, and t2, that of the light returning to him. Out of these, he can construct two other numbers and call them coordinates. The first (t = ½ (t1+t2)) defines the epoch of the events and the second (r = ½ c(t2-t1)), where c is the space of light, the distance defined by time coordinates. Next, a distant monad, a second observer, who can perform the same operations, emits and receives light and builds a clock. Both observers now send their own

191 J. Whithrow40 has attempted to give a metaphysical foundation to Natural Philosophy based on Milne's Kinematic Relativity that he considers as the most achieved such system. He notes that although scientists in general reject a rationalist approach that tries to show the metaphysical necessity of natural laws, scientific method is dominated by two principles: the principle of uniformity and the principle of communicability. In addition, these principles are sufficient to define an a priori framework for physics on a deductive basis. It is on this second principle and on Milne's operational method that M. Johnson relies to build a theory of knowledge in which scientific knowledge is defined by its communicability and its truth is tested by a coherence theory of truth. The individuals are individual observers who, contrary to Leibniz's monads that do not communicate, entertain mutual relationships as in Milne's theory. Johnson claims that his methodology derives from that of the realist philosophers Russell and Broad who see physics as the study of form and structure rather than that of things, and whose central problem was the gap between the sense-data and what the mind makes of them, an interaction that Rescher sees as the pivotal mode of process. Johnson also agrees with Whitehead to recognize the problem of the subjective mind with respect to the objective reality and to criticize the misleading transfer of argumentation from physics to metaphysics, space and time being fallaciously treated as substance. Whitehead also showed that minds abstract the concepts of space, time and point-instants from the events described in the relativistic space-time continuum. Space-time is not an abstraction from our actual experience of motion or from some temporal order. Matter is also a derived abstraction, not a simple object of

reading of time at their clock to each other, i.e. they make three observations each. Then they can regraduate and correlate their clocks in such a way that they agree one with the other and that all their observations coincide. Doing so, they define a 'congruence'. Two observers with congruent clocks are then equivalent. Generalizing to any number of observers, Milne defines a 'substratum', according to him, one of the fundamental concepts of natural philosophy, from which the laws of dynamics, optics and gravitation can be deduced. An interesting feature of the theory to note is the existence of two scales of time. In one scale, the universe is at rest; in the other, it is dynamical. The passage from one to the other simply results from a simple logarithmic transformation of the equations. (See North, J. D. The Measure of the Universe: A History of Modern Cosmology, Oxford, Clarendon P., 1965; Merleau-Ponty, J., Cosmologie du XXe siècle, Paris, Gallimard, 1968). 40

Whitrow, 1946.

192 perception nor an ultimate concept for science and philosophy of science. Time as a “thing” is a myth to be replaced by “temporal order” or “experience of events as sequences41.” According to Johnson, physics, relativistic and quantic, has shown that the classical way of building theories from hypothesis to laws of nature based on causality and mechanism was inadequate, but also, that the formal deductive mathematics and empirical inductive natural sciences were inadequate to convey the meaning of truthful argument. While traditional investigations started from physical propositions as premises of deductions, Milne starts from epistemological premises which, according to Johnson's view, amount to some notion of knowledge, the “physical” being redefined as “intelligible” or “knowable.” This notion of intelligibility is of course related to the operational procedure of Milne's theory that starts from individual perception that orders events into time sequences. Knowledge, which amounts to showing that these time sequences can be connected, is true if it is coherent and communicable. Logic has known the same fate as physics, passing from the belief in the eternal truth of propositions to the emphasis on propositional functions enabling logical forms to be meaningful independently of any particular proposition. By analogy, the static properties true or false are replaced by “always true,” “sometimes false,” “formally correct but materially correct only if….” Contrary to the tradition that defines truth either, by self-consistency and internal coherence of some set of ideas, or by the correspondence of those ideas with independent facts, Johnson defines truth as coherence between propositions. Coherent statements do “correspond” to one another in the way the realists' statements correspond to the facts. What imposed Johnson to consider truth as communicability is a fundamental ambiguity: coherence as a test of communicability of scientific truth and coherence between “ideas” is scientifically but not metaphysically identical with coherence of “propositions and relations 41

Two examples of Johnson's statements show how close to that of N. Rescher his position is. “Static configurations of 'things' are seldom of importance to physics and one more vital interest is their tendencies to alter and the differential equations show what controls that alteration; the precise character of the 'flux' of any property tells more of its nature than any 'still picture'. This is one of the reasons why 'Time' is the most essential of physical variables […]” (pp. 58-59) and “'Intelligibility' has thus become divorced from fictitious claims to 'know what thing underlies phenomena' in any sense of deriving a causal model of mechanism and expecting it to be a picture reduced in size from perceptual experience”. (p. 60).

193 expressible as equations.” This notion of coherence extracted from physics avoids the problem of the infinite regression to which that of correspondence is confronted. Indeed, “by what independent comparison can we check the supposed reality with which our statements must correspond?” As soon as we abandon the claim to know all about the unknowable “thing”, we have to adopt the coherence theory of truth42. 7. Conclusion: Unavoidable Subjectivity The growing interest for process thought in philosophy reveals a changing perspective and attitude towards philosophy and science, towards the knowledge and the image of the world they offer. The developments of history and philosophy of science over the last century clearly show that evolution. Increasingly, besides the results of their investigations, the scientists' activities are taken into account. The process of inquiry comes first. In some way, science can be seen as 'scientists at work', an activity performed in a specific cultural framework. Process thought must thus account for some objective knowledge of the world while acknowledging that a subjective mind builds that knowledge. Our current scientific knowledge is not necessarily as objective as usually thought or taught. Process thought has to take into account statements of the sciences that are revisable and that will eventually be revised. Newtonian physics has been largely superseded by relativistic and quantum physics that will probably be superseded by different theorizations. A principle of linguistic relativity, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis43, claims that language determines what we call reality. Various linguistic communities live in various worlds. Our conception of the universe is entirely determined by language and to various languages correspond various models of the universe. What we call science and philosophy are products of the Indo-European languages and of their particular ontologies.

42

On the coherence theory of truth, see N. Rescher's The Coherence Theory of Truth, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1973, D. Bates, “Nicholas Rescher’s coherence theory of truth”, in Logique et Analyse, 63-64 (1973), pp. 393-411.

43

E. Sapir, “The status of linguistics as a science”, in Selected Writings, ed. D. G. Mandelbaum, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1949; B. L. Whorf, Language, Thought and Reality, ed. J. B. Carroll, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1956.

194 If process thought takes subjectivity and cultural relativity into account, it has to define its proper notion of objective knowledge. Comparing the world given by our perceptions to the world as it is said to be, we have to consider our knowledge of the world and the way it is acquired. Following Rescher (CI16, 17, 24), we have to recognize a role to the mind in the construction of the world. The world, as we conceive it, is such as to be construed in terms whose adequate explication calls for a reference to minds and their capacities. Rescher has often emphasized that theories and models are constructions dependent on the researcher intellectual and cultural background. Nevertheless, although they are products of his mind in the first place, the theories and models are necessary for our understanding of the world and in any case, they rest essentially on an empirical view of how things work in the world44. If we want to support some form of subjectivity, we can hope to gain some new insights into the nature of knowledge and how it is acquired from the rapid developments of cognitive sciences. These developments could add support to the view that the world is only as we conceive it to be, that all information on the world is obtained through operations of the mind that builds models through which we conceive that world. Connectionism in philosophy of mind could show how we understand theories and explanations in modelling the cognitive activities45. In such an approach, inquiry no longer operates at the level of truth-value or confirmation of theoretical or empirical statements first, but at a higher, holistic level of global picture or design that is to be reconstructed. In this perspective, scientific explanation could well be radically different. However, this is prospective speculation and here, Rescher does not take us that far. Nevertheless, process philosophy implies a new and different attitude towards the world, science and traditional philosophy. The detour through the semantics of natural language and through chapters of the history of mathematics and physics in order to illustrate and better understand Rescher's views was also intended to underline some problems and limitations of our classical ways of representing the world and to suggest various orientations towards possible solutions through older and forgotten proposals.

44

See PrP.

45

Churchland, P. M., A neurocomputational perspective: the nature of mind and the structure of science, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1989.

195 If we agree on rehabilitating subjectivity and intersubjectivity and on recognizing our cultural determinations in the construction of our conceptions of a dynamic world, new notions of objectivity, models and theories may have to be defined.

196 References Aristotle, Physics, in The Works of Aristotle translated into English, (W. D. Ross, ed.), Vol. II, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1970. Aristotle, De Caelo, in idem. Barwise John and Etchemendy, John, The Liar: An Essay on Truth and Circularity, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1987. Berkeley, Georg, The Analyst; or a Discourse addressed to an infidel Mathematician, Dublin, 1734. Brouwer, L. J, “Intuitionism”, Bul. Am. Math. Soc., 20 (1913), pp. 81-96. Code, Murray, Order and Organism, Albany, SUNY Press, 1985. Hamilton, William Rowan, The Mathematical Papers of Sir William Rowan Hamilton, Vol. 3, H. Halberstam and R.E. Ingram (eds.), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1967. Hankins, Thomas L., Sir William Rowan Hamilton, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1980. Johnson, Martin, Science and the Meaning of Truth, London, Faber and Faber, 1946. Kamp, Hans and Reyle, Uwe, From Discourse to Logic, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1992 Kripke, Saul, “Outline of a theory of truth”, Journal of Philosophy, 72 (1975), pp. 690-716. Ladrière, Jean, “The role of a notion of finality in a philosophical cosmology”, in Shuster, G. N. and Thorson, R. E., (eds) Evolution in Perspective: Commentaries in Honor of P. Lecomte de Noüy, Notre Dame, Ind., University of Notre Dame Press, 1970, pp. 71107. Martin, Robert, Recent Essays on Truth and the Liar Paradox, New York, Oxford University Press, 1984. Milne, Edward A., “The fundamental concepts of natural philosophy”, Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin., A, 62, (1943-44), pp. 10-24. Newton, Isaac, Whiteside, D. T. (ed.), The Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, Vol. 8, 1981. Reichenbach, Hans, Elements of Symbolic Logic, London, Macmillan, 1947. Priest, Graham, Routley, Richard, Norman, Jane, (eds), Paraconsistent Logic. Essays on the Inconsistent, München, Philosophia Verlag, 1989. Rescher, Nicholas and Brandom, Robert, The Logic of Inconsistency, Oxford, Blackwell, 1980. Russell, Bertrand, Logic and Knowledge, London, G. Allen and Unwin, 1956. Shaw, James Byrnie, Synopsis of Linear Associative Algebra, Washington D.C., Carnegie Institution, 1907. Vendler, Zeno, Linguistic and Philosophy, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1967. Whitehead, Alfred North, Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology 1929, Corrected Edition. Edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne, New York and London, The Free Press. A division of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. / Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1978. Whitehead, Alfred North, Modes of Thought, New York, MacMillan, 1938. Whitrow, John, “The epistemological foundations of natural philosophy”, Philosophy 21 (1946), pp. 5-28. Wiener, Norbert, “A contribution to the theory of relative position”, Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. 17 (1914), pp. 441-449

VIII. SCIENCE: PROCESS AND HISTORY Hanne Andersen (Copenhagen)

Abstract (1) Rescher’s processual account of science depicts scientific inquiry as an epitome of the processual nature of knowledge. On this view, science is not seen as a body of theories, but as a process, as an ongoing venture in inquiry whose products are ever changing. (2) Traditionally within philosophy of science, discussions of the development of science are closely connected to discussions of scientific realism. Realists assume that there exists some fixed realm of theory-independent entities, and argue that the aim of science is to improve the accordance between our concepts and these entities, to ‘cut the world at its joints.’ Anti-realists reject the assumption that some fixed realm of theory-independent entities exist. I shall argue that recent attempts at developing positions between realism and anti-realism that 'carve joints in the world' only in a historical process lead to conclusions about the development of science that are very similar to the view described by Rescher. (3) Further, I shall show that some anti-realist scholars focus on actions rather than on entities. (4) Finally, I shall argue that on this basis a developmental view can be developed that seems compatible with both process and substance ontologies.1

1. The Processual View The processual view of scientific inquiry focuses on the development of science rather than on the science developed. This focus on science in flux emphasises the ever transitory and provisional character of scientific theories and maintains as an empirical fact that at no actual stage does

1

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Peter Barker, Stig Brorson, Johanna Seibt and Carsten Sestoft for valuable comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this paper.

198 science yield a final and unchanging result (cf. PM 141). In sum, “the crux of process epistemology lies in its […] insistence on seeing the enterprise of rational enquiry—be it in natural science or elsewhere—as being a process” (PM 140). Although few philosophers of science would disagree with the view that science is continuously developing, there is considerable disagreement on how science develops. Some adhere to the view that new discoveries are primarily refinements to the existing knowledge so that science grows gradually closer and closer to the truth.2 Others assert that, instead of a basically cumulative development, science occasionally undergoes revolutions in which scientific knowledge is replaced rather than refined.3 Rescher makes no bones about his sympathy with the latter view and recommends openly that “we abandon the naive cumulativist/preservationist view of knowledge acquisition for the view that new discoveries need not augment but can displace old ones” (PM 131). Thus, on Rescher’s view it is an inevitable aspect of science that it is “ever constrained to give up old claims in the light of new evidence” (PM 140, italics added). Similarly, we have to recognize that whatever scientific progress is, it “generally entails fundamental changes of mind about how things work in the world” (PM 131). To vindicate the claim that usually all scientific theories get modified or replaced at some point, Rescher, like many other philosophers of science before him, calls on the history of science for empirical evidence. From history Rescher argues that “all the experience we can muster indicates that there is no justification for regarding our present-day science as more than an inherently imperfect stage within an ongoing development” (PM 141) and that

2

Putnam’s version of the causal theory initiated one of the major branches of theory realism, maintaining that later theories in general provide “better descriptions of the same entities that earlier theories referred to” (Putnam 1975, italics in the original). Although the purely commutative view in its simplest forms may now largely have been abandoned for refined positions that include various forms of fallibilism (e.g. Sankey 1997), the overall idea of gradual refinement and progress towards the truth has remained.

3

Kuhn’s (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions marked the break-through for this view. Whereas initially this view had problems dealing with a notion of scientific progress, later refined positions have attempted to develop accounts of progress different from a drawing closer to the truth and which may therefore still retain the overall idea of occasional revolutions (e.g. Kuhn 1991).

199 the history of science shows all too clearly that many of our scientific theories about the workings of nature have a finite life span. They come to be modified or replaced in the light of further investigation […]. The “state of the art” of natural science is a human artifact that, like all other human creations, falls subject to the ravages of time (PM 140-141). The inductive inference that since most theories in the history of science have at some point been shown to be wrong, therefore our theories too will one day be discarded, has become known in philosophy of science as the negative (or pessimistic) meta-induction, or the principle of no privilege.4 The negative meta-induction is usually brought forth as a historical observation used to confute various forms of realism. However, one may go further than the mere observation that in the course of history most scientific theories have changed and describe in addition a mechanism to account for the instability of the products of science. Rescher points out that a scientific theory is a structure built to house, and attuned to the needs of, a certain body of experiences—fitted to the conditions of observation and information processing of a particular technological state of the art. As these conditions change, stresses and strains develop which destabilize the theorystructure and lead to its eventual collapse. (PM 141ff) Thus, changed experimental and observational conditions are what will at some point inevitably destabilize any scientific theory. Again, this need not be just a historical observation, but may be a direct consequence of the conditions for developing empirical sciences. The first step of such an argument can be provided by Rescher’s claim that “our exploration of physical-parameter space is inevitably incomplete” (PM 148) and that “we inevitably face the (very real) prospect that the regularity structure of the as-yet-inaccessible cases generally does not conform to the patterns of regularity prevailing in the currently accessible cases” (PM 148). But this incompleteness claim needs to be explained.

4

The versions of the inductive inference usually discussed in current debates are Laudan’s (1981, 1984) negative meta-induction and Hesse’s (1976) principle of no privilege. However, the historical induction as such predates both Laudan and Hesse, see e.g. Duhem (1906). For a detailed treatment of historical induction, see e.g. Psillos (1999), ch. 5.

200 First, physical-parameter space itself could simply be too vast to be fully exhausted by science. Such an explanation would place the ultimate reason for the ever continuing process of science with an unlimited physical complexity of nature. However, Rescher argues that it is not necessary to take recourse to such claims that place the limitlessness purely on the side of the objects of science; there is “no need to suppose that the physical complexity of nature is unlimited in order for nature to have an unlimited cognitive depth” (PM 151).5 Instead, Rescher argues that our information acquisition is technologically mediated and therefore limited by our technological resources. Since they are restricted and finite, our information acquisition and thereby our exploration of physical-parameter space remains imperfect and incomplete: “[W]e can never exhaust of the whole of these parametric ranges of temperature, pressure, particle velocity, and the like because of physical resistance as one moves toward the extremes” (PM 148). Every level of technical capability has inherent limitations, and these limitations in turn give rise to cognitive limitations of science (cf. PM 150). But another kind of explanation of the incompleteness claim is left, namely an explanation based neither on the physical parameter space itself, nor on our detection of the parameters, but instead on our structuring of the relations between parameters within that part of physical parameter space to which our current technology gives us access. Although Rescher

5

Admittedly, Rescher does briefly adduce a specific argument of this one-sided type, namely the argument that an ever continuing evolution of nature may explain why science never reaches a stable end point: “cosmic evolution itself exhibits the emergence of more and more complex and elaborate forms of order: in the sequential development of materials for an ongoing series of sciences: plasma physics, particle physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, and so on. Cosmic development is the unfolding of ever more complex concatenations of process” (PM 93). Similarly, Rescher argues that “early in world history, before the evolution of complex molecules, there was no place for biological laws […]. As the cosmos grows older, new modes of natural organization gradually evolve to afford new phenomena that are governed by emerging laws of their own […] Since the universe affords a varied panorama of modalities of physical processes evolving over time, a science that reflects this will continue to find new grist for its mill” (PM 78). Like for most evolutionary arguments, for this argument to be effective it needs a discussion of the time span of evolutionary developments compared to the time span of scientific developments. Especially, if science is considered primarily a human activity, evolutionary time scales of the development of nature as such may well exceed the time scale of science as such which leaves the argument ineffective.

201 focuses primarily on the explanation in terms of technological resources he points out that any adequate theory of inquiry must recognize that the ongoing process of information acquisition at issue in science is a process of conceptual innovation, which always leaves certain facts about things wholly outside the cognitive range of the inquirers of any particular period. (PM 133) This might of course just bring us back to the facts we do not know because our technologically mediated information acquisition does not enable us to acquire them. But one may go further than that. Thus, Rescher points out that in our structuring of the relations between the parts of physical parameter space to which our current technology gives us access, we may “move from laws governing phenomena (first-order laws) to laws governing such laws (second-order laws) and so on, ascending to new levels of sophistication and comparative complexity as we move on” (PM 150f). On this argument, the limited physical complexity of nature could still provide an unlimited potential for finding new laws. Further, our structuring of physical parameters must be partly interest dependent. For example, as Rescher argues: take a stone. Consider its physical features: its shape, surface texture, chemistry, and so forth. And then consider its causal background: its genesis and subsequent history. Then consider its functional aspects as relevant to its uses by the stonemason, the architect, the landscape decorator, and so on. There is, in principle, no theoretical limit to the different lines of consideration available to yield descriptive truths about any real thing whatever. (PM 129ff) An argument not spelled out by Rescher, but to which we shall return in section 2 below, could be that the different ‘lines of consideration’ might not all be consistent. Sciences based on aspects relevant to different purposes might lead to different theories. Rescher’s argument seems to be that due both to the development in our technical capabilities and to an unending exfoliation of law-levels, we can never achieve any assurance that a theory that accommodates all currently available observations will conform to all future observations as well. However, the development in our technical capabilities has also been used to argue for the opposite conclusion, against the negative metainduction. For example, Brown (1990, 2001) argues that modern instrumentation has changed in a way that makes it difficult to draw

202 inferences from the fate of previous science to the fate of current science. Further, the development of scientific instrumentation has increased the constraints that a scientific theory must accommodate. Hence, if one insists on historical inductions, it is necessary to make a comparative evaluation of the inductive support for the negative meta-induction with the evidence that supports contemporary theories. Brown’s intuition is that the evidence supporting some current theories may well be much greater than the evidence supporting the negative meta-induction, but he settles on the modest conclusion that “nothing in this account guarantees that we will eventually achieve a correct description in any given field […] But nothing precludes this outcome, and we may be more successful in some fields than in others” (Brown 2001, p. 134). There seems to be neither a definitive argument in favour of the negative meta-induction, nor one against it. All we can assert is that a future replacement of our current theories can neither be ruled out nor held for certain.6 Nevertheless, on Rescher’s view we have to acknowledge that “what appear as the timeless truth of one era are merely transitory beliefs from the vantage point of another”(PM 140). Yet, at the same time Rescher maintains that science progresses. Scientific progress is the continuous “physical exploration—and subsequent theoretical systematisation—of phenomena distributed over the parametric space of the physical quantities spreading out all about us” (PM 146). Thus, science has progressed, from exploring parameters that can be immediately observed using our senses, to exploring parameters whose observation requires more and more complicated instrumentation: near the ‘home base’ of the parametric state of things prevailing in our accustomed natural environment, we can— thanks to the evolutionary heritage of our sensory and cognitive apparatus—operate with relative ease and freedom by scanning nature with the unassisted senses for data regarding its modes of operation. But in due course we accomplish everything that can be managed by these unsophisticated means. To do more, we have to extend our probes into nature more deeply, deploying

6

This inconclusiveness is characteristic of the current state of the debate. Reviewing the general debate between realism and anti-realism Kukla has concluded “there are (as yet) no good reasons for endorsing either realism or anti-realism” (Kukla 1994, p. 974). Similarly, Hoyningen-Huene and Oberheim (1997) have ascribed the sterility of the debate to ‘meta-incommensurability’ between realists and antirealists.

203 increasing technical sophistication and power to achieve more and more demanding levels of interactive capability.”(PM 145f) Thus, Rescher conveys the view that scientific progress consists in an increasing systematisation of phenomena distributed in parametric space. This systematisation cannot be expected to be cumulative, but is always in danger of being drastically restructured. 2. Categories and Kinds Rescher’s account of the development of science focuses strongly on the systematisation of phenomena, the regularities in parametric space. But in the philosophy of science regularities in parametric space are usually described by kinds—a key notion of the substance-based philosophy that Rescher wants to overcome. So what does Rescher say about kinds? On his view, things must be seen as “bundles of powers” (PM 53). In other words, kinds are constituted as such “because they exhibit a commonality in what they do” (PM 71). The properties by which kinds are identified and individuated “are nothing other than the effects produced by those putative things upon ourselves and/or upon one another” (PM 56). Rescher’s recurrent insistence on science and its products as fickle and transitory makes it interesting to compare his accounts both of kinds and of the development of science with recent non-realist accounts of scientific kinds that likewise emphasise the unstable nature of the products of science. I shall here focus on one particular analysis of scientific kinds, namely one based on regularities in parametric space which was introduced by Kuhn during the 1980s and 1990s. This approach has been developed further by other philosophers and historians of science, among them Hoyningen-Huene (1992), Buchwald (1992), and Andersen, Barker and Chen (see Barker, Chen & Andersen 2003 for an overview of the development). Similar views have also been developed by cognitive psychologists, especially Rosch and her collaborators (e.g., Rosch & Mervis 1975, Rosch et al. 1976, Rosch 1978, Rosch 1987).7 This approach starts from two central claims: first, that the world is a phenomenal world in the sense that although it is perceptually and conceptually subdivided in a certain way, this subdivision is not simply

7

On the accordance between the philosophical and psychological accounts, see e.g. Andersen, Barker & Chen 1996; Barker, Chen & Andersen 2003.

204 read off from the world itself.8 Instead, it is a structure that is imposed on the world by means of the concepts applied to it. The second central claim is that the structure is constituted by relations of similarity and dissimilarity. The world is divided into kinds through similarities between instances of a kind and dissimilarities to instances of other kinds. But similarities cannot be invented at will to constitute any arbitrary structure of the world. Anomalies inevitably appear if we try, that is, situations in which it becomes clear that objects do not behave as prescribed by the relations of similarity and dissimilarity. In that respect, it is an objective matter whether instances are similar in certain respects.9 However, there may exist infinitely many potential similarities between equally many potential kinds. Different relations of similarity and dissimilarity may not all be compatible, but may instead constitute different worlds, that is, worlds that are subdivided into different kinds, carved by different joints.10 In that case we cannot encompass all potential similarities and dissimilarities in a single structuring of the world. On this view, the structure of the world is generated in mind-world interaction, and the ever transitory character of science may therefore be explained through a gradual development of the similarity and dissimilarity relations. This development may be continuous and gradual, but may still occasionally lead to fundamental restructurings of the world.

8

Hoyningen-Huene (1992, ch. 2.1) therefore introduced two concepts of the world: the phenomenal world which is a perceived world, and the world-in-itself which is a hypothetical fixed nature. This is a view that should not be foreign to Rescher since he too maintains that “we are not — and will never be — in a position to evade or abolish the contrast between ‘things as we think them to be’ and ‘things as they actually and truly are’” (PM 131).

9

This claim is similar to Rescher’s rejection of the idea that the unity, structure and identity of processes could be dependent exclusively on the mind’s operation (cf. PM 71).

10

This claim is similar to Rescher’s insight discussed above that, in principle, there is no theoretical limit to the different lines of considerations available to yield descriptive truths about any real thing (cf. PM 129f). Similar arguments have also been advanced by other philosophers, e.g. Bambrough. In his classical paper on family resemblance, he developed the example of the South Sea Islanders’ classification of trees into boat-building trees and house-building trees instead of the standard botanical classification made by Western scientists, noting that “there is no limit to the number of possible classifications of objects” and that “there is no classification of any set of objects which is not objectively based on genuine similarities and differences” (Bambrough 1961, p. 221f).

205 3. Physical Parameters and the Role of Instruments The emphasis on similarities and dissimilarities ascribes a special importance to features which differentiate between instances of different categories, and this brings us back to Rescher’s parameter space. Formulated in terms of physical parameter space, each feature corresponds to one dimension in this space and will take different values for the different categories. Of course, categories may be distinguished by several different features. In this case, the categories to be discriminated form delimited volumes in a multi-dimensional physical parameter space. The conjunction of all features can be seen as a hypothesis about the behaviour of future members of the category. So far, all cases have been positive, but new experiments with new equipment may show us to be wrong. The important thing from a process metaphysical viewpoint is just what these features that are supposed to identify and individuate kinds are. Rescher emphasises that the features by which kinds are identified and individuated are nothing but effects; that kinds are constituted as such because they are similar in what they do. This view may not be as controversial as it first appears. Many scholars hold the view that the features that render category members similar or dissimilar are interactional properties. This notion is originally due to Lakoff who defines the interactional properties of everyday objects as “the result of our interactions as part of our physical and cultural environments given our bodies and our cognitive apparatus” (Lakoff 1987, p. 51). Highly similar views have been expressed for scientific kinds. Since our interactions with the world when doing science often involve instruments, several scholars have pointed out that in science instruments may play an essential role in distinguishing between kinds on the basis of such interactional properties. For example, elaborating on Kuhn’s work on categorisation and scientific kinds Buchwald has argued that “experimental work divides the elements of the [taxonomic] tree from one another: sitting at the nodes or branch-points of the tree, experimental devices assign something to this or that category” (Buchwald 1992, p. 44).11 On this view, instruments are sorting devices which differentiate between instances of different scientific kinds by determining specific features which differ for those kinds through the interaction between

11

Similar views have been expressed by e.g. Chen (1995, 2000)

206 instrument and the purported kinds.12 Such interactional properties obviously need not exist as properties prior to the existence of the instruments. Instead, instruments may be used to discover new interactional properties of already known kinds, and instruments may be used to establish new kinds that simply “emerge as someone attempts to grapple with a particular device” (Buchwald 1992, p. 44). This may happen when an instrument is discovered to react in different ways in different situations, that are then sorted as instances of different kinds depending on the reaction. Hence, not even the object to which the instrument is applied must exist as an object prior to the application, but may instead be posited as a result of different behaviours of the instrument. This position fits well with Rescher’s view that new phenomena come into view as our capacity to move about in the parametric space of the physical world is enhanced, (cf. PM 146) and this capacity is inevitably determined technologically. Further, as Buchwald notes, “nothing in this description requires invoking an absolute, eternal world of entities that apparatus-based science uncovers over time” (Buchwald 1992, p. 60). But does that mean that we can dispense with kinds entirely? 4. The priority of Kinds and Actions To dismiss kinds purely in favour of interactional properties might well be too hasty. As Kuhn has pointed out, the recognition of similarity between instances of one kind and dissimilarity in instances of other kinds implies that there are discontinuities along some dimensions in quality space, otherwise everything would just be similar to anything else.13 These discontinuities are the joints about which we can carve the world into kinds. But again, there may be different sets of discontinuities, different joints at which to carve different phenomenal worlds. This may seem circular: the joints secure the recognition of similar and dissimilar relations, but at the same time the similar and dissimilar

12

Further, instruments should be understood in a very generalized sense as entities that make things happen to objects or that react to happenings. The characteristic of instruments is thus that they can be changed in essential ways and that in this process, different things happen, or different reactions are elicited to the same event (cf. Buchwald 1992, p. 58).

13

For a detailed account of the argument, see Hoyningen-Huene 1992, ch. 3, Andersen 2001.

207 relations are constitutive of the joints. However, by adopting a developmental view, the circle vanishes. On a developmental view one is always born into an existing phenomenal world. In this way, the structure of the world is inherited by any generation from its predecessors. In that respect the structure is already in place, ready to secure the recognition of similar and dissimilar relations for the new generation. But once the new generation has gained access to this particular world, its members may start reshaping it by introducing new relations of similarity and dissimilarity and abandoning old ones, thus obtaining a different world carved by different joints and consequently subdivided into different kinds than the ones they inherited. Thus, the structure of the world exists in a historical process in which it is transmitted gradually from one generation to the next. Adopting this view, the seemingly circular dependence of kinds and similarities is made to vanish, simply because it is no longer an interesting question whether kinds were first established from similarities, or similarities first established from kinds.14 It is important to note that this developmental view, which eliminates seemingly circular dependence of kinds and similarities, at the same time undermines the primacy of kinds. According to Rescher, one should adopt the processual point of view because what links the various instances of a kind is their functioning since the instances of kinds are similar in what they do. On that view the integrity of kinds boils down to a unity of processes. On the developmental view, on the other hand, the question whether kinds are constituted by similarities (whether based on actions, as Rescher insists, or on properties in general), or whether it is the kinds that give rise to the similarities, was seen to vanish. Accepting this developmental view, kinds cannot claim primacy over actions, nor can actions claim primacy over kinds. Thus, the developmental view may please Rescher for it is not based firmly on substance ontology—but it may also displease him in doing this by leaving the question of primacy between substance and action just as unanswerable as the classic question of the chicken and the egg.

14

Detailed versions of this argument may be found in Andersen (2000, 2001).

208 References Andersen, Hanne. 2000. “Kuhn’s Account of Family Resemblance: A Solution to the Problem of Wide-Open Texture,” Erkenntnis, 52, 313-337 Andersen, Hanne. 2001. “Reference and Resemblance,” Philosophy of Science, 68 (Proceedings), S50-S61 Andersen, Hanne, Barker, Peter & Chen, Xiang. 1996. “Kuhn’s Mature Philosophy of Science and Cognitive Psychology,” Philosophical Psychology, 9, 347-363 Bambrough, Renford. 1961. “Universals and Family Resemblance,” Proc. Aris. Soc., 61, 207-222 Barker, Peter, Chen, Xiang & Andersen, Hanne. 2003. “Kuhn on Concepts and Categorization,” in T. Nickles ed., Thomas Kuhn (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), 212-245 Brown, Harold. 1990. “Prospective Realism,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 21, 211-242 Brown, Harold. 2001. “Incommensurability and Reality,” in P. Hoyningen-Huene & H. Sankey eds., Incommensurability and Related Matters, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science vol. 216 (Dordrecht, Kluwer), pp. 123-142 Buchwald, Jed. 1992. “Kinds and the wave theory of light,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 23, 39-74 Carrier, Martin. 1993. “What is Right With the Miracle Argument, Establishing a Taxonomy of Natural Kinds,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 24, 391-409 Chen, Xiang. 1995. “Taxonomic Changes and the Particle-Wave Debate in Early Nineteenth-century Britain,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 26, 251-271 Chen, Xiang. 2000. Instrumental Traditions and Theories of Light, The Uses of Instruments in the Optical Revolution (Dordrech, Kluwer) Duhem, Pierre. 1906. The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press 1954) Hesse, Mary. 1976. “Truth and Growth of Knowledge,” in F. Suppe & P.D. Asquith (eds.), PSA 1976 vol. 2 (East Lansing, Philosophy of Science Association), pp. 261-280 Hoyniningen-Huene, Paul. 1992. Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions. Thomas S. Kuhn’s Philosophy of Science (Chicago, University of Chicago Press) Hoyningen-Huene, Paul & Oberheim, Eric. 1997. “Incommensurability, Realism and Meta-Incommensurability,” Theoria, 12, 447-465 Kuhn, Thomas S. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago, University of Chicago Press) Kuhn, Thomas S. 1991. “The Road since Structure,” PSA 1990, vol. 2 (East Lansing, MI, Philosophy of Science Association), pp. 3-13 Kukla, Andre. 1994. “Scientific Realism, Scientific Practice, and the Natural Ontological Attitude,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 45, 955975 Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, What Categories Reveal About the Mind (Chicago, University of Chicago Press)

209 Laudan, Larry. 1981. “A Confutation of Convergent Realism,” Philosophy of Science, 48, 19-49 Laudan, Larry. 1984. Science and Values (Berkeley, University of California Press) Psillos, Stathis. 1999. Scientific Realism. How Science Tracks Truth (London, Routledge) Putnam, Hilary. 1975. “The meaning of ‘meaning’,” in K. Gunderson (ed.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. VII (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press). Reprinted in H. Putnam, Mind, Language, and Reality (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), pp. 215-271 Rosch, Eleanor. 1978. “Principles of Categorization,” in E. Rosch & B.B. Lloyd (eds.), Cognition and Categorization (Hillsdale NJ, Erlbaum) Rosch, Eleanor. 1987. “Wittgenstein and Categorization Research in Cognitive Psychology,” in M. Chapman & R.A. Dixon (eds.), Meaning and the Growth of Understanding. Wittgenstein’s Significance for Developmental Psychology (Berlin, Springer), pp. 151-166 Rosch, Eleanor & Mervis, C.B. 1975, “Family Resemblance, Studies in the Internal Structure of Categories,” Cognitive Pscyhology, 7, 573-605 Rosch, Eleanor, Mervis, C.B., Gray, W.D., Johnson, D.M. & Boyes-Braem, P. 1976, “Basic Objects in Natural Categories,” Cognitive Psychology, 8, 382-439 Sankey, Howard. 1997, “Incommensurability, The Current State of the Play,” Theoria, 12, 425-445

IX. PROCESS THEOLOGY John B. Cobb, Jr. (Claremont)

Abstract Rescher focuses on the contribution of process thought to revising the Western understanding of God. He depicts the advantages of this revision convincingly, making the change seem almost too easy. The sharper break is explored with respect to divine omnipotence, divine action, God as person, and causal action. By staying at a general level of understanding of process thought, Rescher is unable to take full advantage of more specific features of Whitehead's version. This is related to his rejection of Whitehead's temporal atomization of process as not fitting his own ideal type of process thought, although he does not seem fully consistent on this point.

1. Rescher's Approach Nicholas Rescher’s treatment of process theology is remarkable for several reasons. Philosophers often draw a sharp line between philosophy and theology. Rescher does not. His treatment of the process approach to theology follows immediately on his treatment of the process approach to science, and the two chapters are written in much the same spirit. The theological topics treated are taken just as seriously as the scientific ones, and the strengths of a process approach are formulated sensitively and accurately. In all these ways Rescher writes not only about process thought but also in the spirit of process thought. For process thought, theology is an integral part of the total way of thinking about reality, not a special compartment with unique subject matter and a radically different methodology.

212 A distinctive feature of Rescher’s approach in this whole book is his undertaking to speak of process thought in a general way rather than presenting just one of its many forms. The shift from substance thinking to process thinking, he believes, can be described and evaluated without entering into the debates that divide process thinkers. There is great value in this approach. It enables philosophical readers to judge whether the move as a whole is desirable before they debate the merits of individual process thinkers. Objections to the views of individual representatives of the process tradition are less likely to lead to rejection of the basic shift of categories for which process thought calls. Some philosophers may be willing to participate in finding better formulations of process thought and better solutions to problems that arise within it. Rescher follows this approach in his treatment of process theology as well. He shows the problems that arise in traditional theology because of its commitment to substance categories. He shows that thinking in process terms circumvents some of these difficulties and actually leads to a way of thought closer to the practical teachings of Judaism and Christianity. For example, process theology enables one to see God as active in the world in a way that is very difficult for substance-oriented theology. But Rescher leaves unformulated just how that activity occurs, since this is a topic on which process theologians differ. Although process thought has developed in a period in which philosophers as a whole have had little interest in theism, it is striking that most of the leading figures in process thought have been theists. Their tendency has been to believe that what is needed is revision of the doctrine of God rather than its dismissal. Nevertheless, some who have been attracted to process thought have urged so radical a revision of traditional theology that even when they continue to use the word God, they cannot be considered theists. And others believe that process philosophy can be formulated better without any reference to “God” at all. Rescher acknowledges these nontheistic forms of process theology or religious process thought, but he gives more attention to the implications of process thought for revising our inherited understanding of God. He presents the ability of process thought to do this as a strength. Indeed, he even states that process theology can be “not so much revisionist as explanatory; its line can be that of the question, If a God along the traditional line exists, then how can a being of this sort be most effectively (most intelligibly and least problematically) conceptualized?”(PM 162-163)

213 Speaking as a Christian process theologian, I greatly appreciate Rescher’s sympathetic understanding. I share his view that process theology, far from being a threat to historic faith, offers itself as a way of supporting and carrying forward the self-understanding of that faith. At a time when belief in the Christian God has been so marginalized in the intellectual world, it is sad that its proponents have devoted so much of their efforts to polemics among themselves. 2. The Issue of Omnipotence On the other hand, Rescher makes the move from substance-oriented theology to process-oriented theology seem easier than it actually is, and he understates the practical and theological implications of making the change. Traditional, substance-oriented theological formulations have taken on a life of their own and have affected religious attitudes. Some of these religious attitudes appear, to process-oriented theologians, to have done great harm. When one challenges them, the reaction is often quite intense. The example that seems most important to me, but is not directly treated by Rescher, is that of the nature of divine power. Rescher’s formulations of how God works in and with the creaturely process are excellent, but he does not make explicit the implications of the reformulation that traditional theologians find most disturbing. For process-oriented theology, God and the creatures are engaged together in a great adventure the outcome of which is not pre-established. God is a real agent in this total process apart from whom there would be no hope for a positive outcome. The attitudes of trust and faithfulness, central to the biblical tradition, are just those that are most needed. But God does not unilaterally control events, and for this reason God’s participation is not a guarantee that either earthly or cosmic history will end in a final consummation. In many ways Christians have taught and acted as if this is the true picture. They have called on people to take responsibility for their individual and collective lives rather than passively awaiting God’s solutions to all problems. The implication has typically been that if human beings do not respond well to God’s call, disastrous consequences can follow. Yet all of this has been accompanied by a quite different teaching, namely, that God is in complete control, that the outcome is pre-ordained. Process theologians believe that this latter teaching tends to undercut the former.

214 One of the worst consequences of the doctrine that God is in complete control is that it implies that God is responsible for all the evil that occurs. There are many ways theologians have tried to resolve this problem, but, however one judges their theoretical success (and process theologians judge it negatively), the doctrine has had enormous practical consequences. When suffering comes, people want to know why God is causing this, and the answers are not uplifting. Many have rejected belief in God because they cannot reconcile that belief with the evil they experience in the world. The process approach, on the other hand, provides a way of understanding how God is at work in and with the sufferer, how God suffers with the sufferer, and how God works to reduce the causes of suffering and calls us to join in that work. This understanding has far more positive results. This contrast has led to polemics on both sides. The rejection of the traditional teaching of divine omnipotence is often regarded as a betrayal rather than a revision (certainly not an explanation) of traditional Christianity. It is claimed that the doctrine of God’s unilateral control of all events is not only traditional but also central to the teaching of the Bible. The task of theology, it is argued, is to defend and explain it—not to jettison it. Recently there has been increased recognition that the doctrine of God’s unilateral determination of all events, baldly stated, has the problems that process theologians among others have pointed out. Accordingly, many theologians have asserted that although God can control everything, God has given us freedom and refrains from interfering with our use of that freedom. Much of the evil that is so severe a problem for faith, when God is held to control all events directly, can be understood as the result of bad choices by human beings. Process theologians welcome this move, but it illustrates the resistance to the deeper shift that is needed. It reduces the harm done by the traditional doctrine, but it does not resolve the problem. One still wonders why, when human evil mounts to a certain level, a God who can control every event does not take the actions necessary to reduce it. The Holocaust has been the standard example of this puzzle. If in fact the notion of God having this kind of power were fundamental to the whole Biblical vision, there would be some justification for holding onto it. Process theologians dispute this reading of the texts. In the Bible God interacts with creatures. God is not depicted, except in rare instances (God’s hardening Pharaoh’s heart is the most frequently cited instance), as controlling the creaturely response. There

215 are, we acknowledge, passages that imply that God brings both good and ill upon the world and that nothing happens except as God wills it. But there are far more passages that call for human obedience and warn of the consequences that follow from disobedience. In hundreds of passages, God’s act is a response to human decisions. Many readers suppose that, regardless of these accounts, the Bible names God as “almighty.” Ironically, this term appears in the Bible only in translation. One proper name for God, especially in Genesis and Job, is “Shaddai.” Today some scholars say that this may have meant “the Breasted One.” Whether or not that is the historical origin of the name, it certainly has nothing to do with omnipotence. Yet throughout the tradition, those who assumed that God is all-powerful found “almighty” to be a convenient translation of “Shaddai.” One wonders how different the development of Christianity might have been had they translated “Shaddai” as “the Breasted One.” Those who defend the idea that divine unilateral control is the biblical teaching often appeal to the doctrine of creation. They argue that the Bible, in contrast to other traditions, teaches “creation out of nothing.” This doctrine assumes that God does not work with any other power, but unilaterally causes to be what is. This stands in contrast with the process view that God is always one among many agents in bringing forth a new event. But the argument that the Bible teaches creation out of nothing is weak. Few scholars today find the strict doctrine of creation out of nothing in the Genesis account. To be sure, when God began creating there was no thing. There was only the void or chaos. But chaos is not the “nothing” usually intended by advocates of creation out of nothing. The biblical image is much more one of bringing order out of chaos, an image quite congenial to process theology. The doctrine of creation out of nothing was developed in the Christian tradition in response to particular threats, such as the teaching that the created world is evil because it was created by God, or by an inferior divine being, from an evil material substance. Creation out of nothing is certainly more faithful to the biblical intention than the doctrine it opposed, but it is by no means the only way to avoid the dualism of an evil matter and a good spirit. The fact that the world comes into being out of chaos does not taint it with inherent evil, although it does help us understand the occurrence of evil within it.

216 3. Divine Action Rescher points out the great difficulty, for substance-oriented theology, of understanding divine action in the world. In this tradition, divine action was largely limited to the category of the miraculous. As belief in current miracles waned, the idea developed that God’s actions were entirely in the past. Theology as a whole had little to say about what God is doing in the present world. Thus the doctrine of divine omnipotence accompanied a view that left God out of consideration as a real factor in the course of events! What were affirmed to affect the course of events were human faith and the changes it effected in people’s attitudes and behaviour. God, thought of in substance terms, appeared remote. Often God’s acts were supposed to be chiefly those that initiated creaturely existence and would bring it to an end some day. The day-to-day relation with God that dominates biblical stories and Pauline theology could play little role. If there is any disagreement here with Rescher’s formulations, it has to do only with the smoothness of the transition from substance-oriented to process-oriented theology. My belief, in harmony with Rescher’s, is that process-oriented theology has greater continuity with the Bible. The biblical authors did not think in terms of substances. Of course, the ancient Hebrews did not think, in a philosophical way, in terms of processes either. But since their dominant mode of discourse was narrative, process categories are far more congenial than substance ones. The impression that the Bible supports later substanceoriented doctrines results from centuries of interpretation by those who were committed to the latter. Today there are many moves among biblical scholars to recover biblical texts and make them available for fresh reading. But the results have not yet been assimilated in the churches. 4. God as Person Another topic on which Rescher makes process theology seem almost too easy is the understanding of God as a person. He writes: “In particular, for processists, there is little difficulty in conceiving of God as a person.” (p, 157) His point is well taken. When a human person is understood as a process, and God is also understood as a process, the problem is transformed. The issue is whether the features of creaturely processes that lead us to designate some of them as persons are to be found in God. The answer to the question is thus partly ontological and partly definitional. It is quite possible to define “a person” as one being among others, whereas what is worthy of being called “God” is sufficiently

217 unique in its nature and activity as to be excluded by this definition. But one may define “person,” as Hartshorne sometimes did, as that which is unitary and conscious. What is required of a reality to merit the label “God” does not exclude those characteristics. The ontological question is, then, whether unity and consciousness can be attributed to the sort of unique process that one judges to exist. For both Whitehead and Hartshorne, the answer is affirmative. But this affirmative answer is not won easily from the processive nature of the world. Whitehead defines “person” in a somewhat different way. For him a “living person” is a succession of occasions each of which inherits from its predecessors in a particular way. Whereas enduring objects in general inherit from their past repetitively, that is, by re-enacting features these have re-enacted from their past, the occasions that make up living persons inherit, in addition, original elements in their predecessors. What one occasion learns newly can be transmitted to its successor. For Whitehead, God is not a “living person” composed of an infinite succession of occasions but a single actual entity in everlasting concrescence. (Rescher is technically inaccurate when he says on page 156 that Whitehead sees God as an “actual occasion.” Whitehead says that God is the one actual entity that is not an actual occasion.) Although this actual entity is unitary and conscious, and its relations to persons are quite personal, it is not, by Whitehead’s definition, a “person.” The difference with Hartshorne is both definitional and ontological. Hartshorne thinks of God as just that succession of occasions that Whitehead requires to justify use of the term. Rescher intends, wisely for his purposes, to avoid this level of discussion. Until issues of this sort become important to one, the discussion is more likely to drive potentially interested readers away than to draw them in. Rescher notes that process theologians diverge in a variety of ways. But he correctly believes that what they have in common is far more important than these differences. We are indebted to him for steadfastly remaining at the more general level. But for those with theological interests who have found that processive thinking is convincing, there can be a certain impatience to get on to clearer accounts of just how it is best to think of God. 5. Causal Relations Despite the advantages of remaining at a high level of generality and avoiding specific process theories, there are also disadvantages. Some of

218 Rescher’s claims may arouse scepticism. His explanations of how God can be easily understood in process thought as an influential part of the total process are not likely to be satisfying. The processes that can be thought of as persons or agents might be viewed as external to one another, so that their ability to influence one another would not be obvious. A strength of the specific form of process thought developed by Whitehead and Hartshorne is that it clarifies how processes influence one another. They are composed of unitary actual occasions, each of which is an instance of many becoming one and being increased by one. To be in the fullest sense is to be a new synthesis of many influences from the past. The occasion is constituted primarily by its relations. There is not first an occasion and then its relations with other occasions. Instead, the occasion comes to be out of the in flowing of the occasions in its immediate past. This doctrine resolves problems that have disturbed the dominant philosophical tradition since the time of Hume. Hume assumed that the causes operative in the natural world must be external. The standard model was of billiard balls striking one another and bringing about motion in the one struck. Hume showed that we have no experience of such external causes. One sensum can only succeed another. No one can observe any necessity in this succession. For process thought of the Whiteheadian variety, the flow of sensa is a secondary or derivative aspect of the process. The flow of subjective experience as a whole is much more fundamental. Within that flow we can discern the influential presence now of what occurred in the past. Our vision arises out of events in our eyes. The influence of the latter on our experience of seeing is an instance of causality. The influence of what we heard a moment ago on the way we understand what we are hearing now is another instance of causality. The past takes part in making the present what it is. This is the true nature of causality, and Whitehead believed it operated throughout the natural world long before there were any human beings reflecting about the relations among sensa. When causal relations are sought among sensa, it is obvious that God cannot function as a cause. God is not a sensum. But when causal relations are understood to be the way one actual entity participates in the constitution of others, then God can be understood to be a causal factor in what happens in the world. It is equally important to emphasize that to be a causal factor is never, unilaterally, to determine the outcome. There are other causal factors, and finally, each occasion decides how to constitute itself out of all these influences.

219 The same reflections make it easy to understand how persons influence one another. We are what we are largely by virtue of what others contribute to us. We are social beings. And if God is understood to be a person or an actual entity of any sort, then God, too, is one of the influences in the constitution of each occasion of personal life. Conversely, all the creaturely occasions participate in constituting the divine life. This vision of the solidarity of the world and of the world with God is deeply satisfying to many of us. It does not exclude transcendence. Indeed, for Whitehead and Hartshorne it is important to say that each occasion transcends its world. It makes its own decision about how to synthesise the influences upon it. It does so in light of alternative possibilities. Similarly, but also uniquely, God transcends all the creatures. 6. A Disagreement with Rescher I do have one real disagreement with Rescher. It is in our respective appraisals of Whitehead and, in particular, of Whitehead’s cell-theory of actuality. The explanation of causality I have offered above depends on this theory. That is, the larger processes, such as historical events or personal conversations, can be analyzed into unitary events such as moments of human experience. It is these that are characterized by the integration of past events. Rescher believes that this feature of Whitehead’s thought departs from the ideal processive vision that he supports. He writes: “Whitehead's approach in process philosophy was somewhat flawed. For Whitehead insisted upon irreducibly atomic units of process—'actual occasions'—themselves altogether indecomposible and serving as basic units or building blocks out of which all larger processes are then constituted.” (PM 89) Rescher views this doctrine as a concession to an alien point of view, and he sees no need to suppose that the analysis of processes into processes cannot go on indefinitely. I recognize that many process thinkers prefer to see the temporally extended processes as continua rather than as composed of unitary moments. I do not question the process character of these philosophies or want to discourage their further development. But I reject the idea that there is in some Platonic realm an ideal form of process thought, deviation from which renders the resulting philosophy “flawed.” To affirm with Whitehead a microscopic process of the concrescence of individual occasions along with the macroscopic process of their succession does not seem to be less processive than affirming only the latter. Surely it is better to allow the two theories of process to compete on an equal footing to see

220 which fits better with the scientific data, can provide a more powerful analysis, and better solve traditional philosophical problems! Long ago I came to the conclusion that Whitehead and Hartshorne won in this competition. Of course, I did not have Rescher's formulations to compare with theirs, and from a process point of view, decisions of that sort should always be open to reconsideration. A number of Whitehead scholars have been led, for one reason or another, to reject Whitehead's position on this point, but their arguments have not, thus far, been convincing to me. And deviation from Rescher’s ideal type is not a sufficient reason for reconsideration. Interestingly, Rescher's own formulations of the impact of quantum thought fit smoothly into Whitehead's view. “Instead of very small things (atoms) combining to produce standard processes (windstorms and such), modern physics envisions very small processes (quantum phenomena) combining in their modus operandi to produce standard things (ordinary macro-objects).” (PM 98) To interpret each of these quanta as an indivisible unit of process seems, in this account, at least allowed. Surprisingly, Rescher seems to agree also on some of the crucial reasons for Whitehead's “atomism.” He writes: “all real time exhibits breadth and duration; it comes in intervals. Process philosophers incline to extend this view from biological and psychological (“lived experience”) time to the time of physics as well. They insist that any process takes its time (however short); there are no punctiform, instantaneous processes. Regarding this as the salient lesson of Zeno's paradoxes, process philosophers count it as a central feature of their own position.” (PM 96) This is an excellent account of the Whiteheadian “atomism” or “celltheory” that Rescher rejects. Given these statements by Rescher, it may be that his rejection of Whitehead’s theory of actual occasions is not as sharp as it sometimes seems. In any case, for me Whitehead’s formulation clarifies the nature of causality in ways that the continuum theories of processes do not. Equally it enables us to affirm that there are real decisions or acts of selfdetermination, acts that I have not been able to fit with the continuum theory. The account of how persons are constitutive of one another offered above depends on this notion of individual occasions. The same is true of the way God and creaturely occasions enter into one another. Process theology, in any case, is not a completed formulation of Christian truth. It is in process, and this process, too, is open-ended. It will change and grow as process thought generally changes and grows and also

221 as the life of the church changes and grows. Rescher’s contribution is to be welcomed enthusiastically.

222 References Cobb, John B., Jr. and Griffin, David Ray, Process Theology. An Introductory Exposition, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, The Westminster Press, 1976. Cobb, John B., Jr., A Christian Natural Theology Based on the Thought of Alfred North Whitehead, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, The Westminster Press, 1965. Cobb, John B., Jr., Sustaining the Common Good: A Christian Perspective on the Global Economy, Cleveland, Pilgrim Press, 1994. Cobb, John B., Jr., The Process Perspective: Frequently Asked Questions about Process Theology, Ed. Jeanyne B. Slettom. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2003. Daly, Herman E.; Cobb, John B. Jr.; Cobb, Clifford W. (with contributions by), For the Common Good. Redirecting the Economy Towards Community, the Environment and a Sustainable Future, Boston, Beacon Press, 1989 (2nd ed. upd. and exp.: 1994).

X. PROCESS PHILOSOPHY: VIA IDEARUM OR VIA NEGATIVA? Anderson Weekes (New York)

Abstract In his recent and seemingly sudden spate of apologetics for process philosophy, Nicholas Rescher makes many strong claims on its behalf. Among them, in chapter X of Process Metaphysics, he credits process philosophy with the uncommon virtues of reflexive consistency and meta-philosophical coherence. While Rescher may seem a late-comer to process philosophy, his affinity for process thought appears quite natural once we see that process all along was the key to his own philosophical project. Over the course of forty years of prolific output Rescher has developed a highly nuanced theory of knowledge that uses pragmatism to negotiate between the pitfalls of idealism and realism. The success of his attempt to understand knowledge as both non-trivially mind-relative and empirically world-referring depends crucially on his concept of knowledge as process. But Rescher’s way of understanding the reflexive consistency and meta-philosophical coherence of process philosophy reflects the needs and ambitions of his own philosophical project and commits him to a conceptually ideal interpretation of process. Process becomes a transcendental idea of reflection that can always be predicated of our knowledge of the world and of the world qua known, but not necessarily of reality an sich. Rescher’s own taxonomy of process thinking implies that it has at least four principle variants. Only one of these conforms to the version endorsed by Rescher. While Rescher’s approach to process philosophy makes it both intelligible and appealing to mainstream analytic philosophy, at the same time it leaves behind the more daring ideas of Bergson, James, and Whitehead, all of whom envisioned the primordial reality of process in a radical ontology of becoming. This variant of process thought can be construed as coherent and self-consistent, too, but not without relinquishing the correspondence theory of truth and embracing challenging ideas that bring us in close proximity to existentialism, apophatic theology, and Buddhism.

224 1. Introduction In his sympathetic overview of process philosophy, Process Metaphysics, Nicholas Rescher is very much in his own element. As much as any of his other books (which wring variations on the inter-animation of realism, pragmatism, and idealism), Process Metaphysics is a broad meditation on the nature of things and the nature of our ideas of things. It affords Rescher an opportunity to explore the dialectic of his favourite topic, which we could perhaps describe as the relationship of things, ideas, and Ideas. His apology for process metaphysics proceeds systematically, comparing the substance and process approaches to explaining the nature of things, how we have ideas of them, and what (constitutive, regulative, or nugatory) role Ideas play in nature and ideation. Having argued for the theoretical strength of process philosophy in addressing the usual topics of philosophy (questions about what categories are ontologically and hermeneutically primary, about the nature of particulars and of persons, about the status of universals) and in conducting the characteristic inquiries that make up the business of philosophy (philosophy of nature, epistemology, philosophy of science, theology) Rescher turns in the concluding chapter, “Process in Philosophy,” to philosophy itself. What could be left to say about the virtues of process philosophy qua philosophy? Rescher advances two additional arguments that constitute the core contentions of this last chapter. Process philosophy has, he argues, two salient and uncommon virtues. It is self-consistent, and it is able to provide a coherent metaphilosophical account of philosophy itself in all its complexity as both an Idea and a fluid historical reality. Process philosophy has the reflexive virtue of self-consistency and the second-order virtue of metaphilosophical coherence. But before we can really assess Rescher’s strong claims for the reflexive consistency and meta-philosophical coherence of process philosophy, we need to understand his own way of approaching process philosophy. For this we must recur not only to the previous nine chapters of Process Metaphysics, but to some extent also to the wider context of his formidable philosophical oeuvre. The decisive question is: why is process philosophy so congenial to the author of The Coherence Theory of Truth, Conceptual Idealism, The Primacy of Practice, Methodological Pragmatism, A System of Pragmatic Idealism, Realistic Pragmatism, and Cognitive Pragmatism, to name but a few of his many books?

225 Given Rescher’s philosophical standpoint as it is extensively articulated independently of his recent apologetics1 for processism, we can learn what his pre-disposed affinity for process thought is, but also something more. We can clarify what particular kind, construal, or aspect of process philosophy it is that he finds an affinity for—and, conversely, what aspects his appreciation may be biased against. Teasing this out will have some revealing implications for the questions of reflexive consistency and meta-philosophical coherence. It will prove useful in this connection for us to compare the analysis of reflexive consistency in chapter X of Process Metaphysics with Rescher’s work on the logic of semantic and mathematical paradoxes.2 By following this indirect route I hope to show that Rescher has, while speaking out compellingly on behalf of process philosophy, nevertheless assimilated its revolutionary ideas to something tamer and less threatening to the tradition than was intended by proponents like Bergson, James, and Whitehead. 2. The Four Variants of Process Philosophy In the Introduction to his Process Metaphysics, Rescher contrasts substance and process metaphysics in terms of the relative precedence philosophers accord to substance and process, distinguishing a weak and a strong version of both positions.3 The weak version posits the priority, but not the primacy of the one over the other. Rescher understands priority by way of dependence: if the one term is dependent on the other, but not vice versa, the independent term is prior. The strong version posits the primacy of the one over the other. Rescher understands primacy by way of reducibility: the one term not only depends on, but also reduces to the other, having no residual being of its own save that of appearance, illusion, or epiphenomenon. The following table illustrates the implied matrix along with Rescher’s examples drawn from pre-Socratic philosophy:

1

Besides PM , Rescher has also published a series of papers on process philosophy, collected in PP.

2

Directly relevant are: CP, ch. IX (166-185), “Reification Fallacies and Inappropriate Totalities;” PRRR; and TPL.

3

PM 2f.

226 TYPES OF METAPHYSICS Precedence of: Weak Version: Priority, but not primacy Strong Version: Primacy

Substance over Process E.g., Democritus

Process over Substance E.g., Empedocles

E.g., E.g., Parmenides Heracleitus

On the weaker metaphysical interpretation, substances depend on (e.g., are engendered and characterized by) processes (such as Empedocles’ Love and Strife), but are not reducible to them, or processes depend on (e.g., are accidents of) substances (such as Democritus’ atoms), but are not reducible to them.4 On the stronger metaphysical interpretation, the one term does not just depend on the other. Its sole reality is constituted by the other: things consist in (are just constellations of) process, such as the flux of Heracleitus; or processes consist in (are simply the unreal “appearances” of) substance, such as the One of Parmenides. Although Rescher represents “priority” as the weaker form of metaphysical precedence (because dependence is a weaker relationship than reducibility), there is a phenomenological sense in which it involves a more radical position. In a relationship of non-reductive dependency, the

4

Rescher does not seem to be altogether consistent in his use of the terms primacy and priority or in his understanding of the difference between the strong and the weak philosophical programs. Here (PM 2f.) the atomism of Democritus appears as an example of the ontological priority of substances, but elsewhere (PM 34) it features as a paradigm example of the ontological primacy of substances. The difference between primacy and priority and the logical structures of dependency, reduction, and transcendence are themes not explored with sufficient clarity by Rescher or the present writer.

227 independent term transcends the dependent one. Ontological priority therefore involves a radical transcendence that is not necessarily associated with ontological primacy. The full significance of this does not become evident until chapter II, in Rescher’s discussion of unowned processes: unowned processes acquire special importance for metaphysics because their transcendence provides unequivocal proof of the precedence of process over substance in the form of ontological priority.5 To anticipate: my argument will focus on whether Rescher’s approach to process philosophy really does justice to this ontological priority of process, especially as it is disclosed by such unowned processes as time. In addition to the primacy/priority contrast, in chapters II, III, and IV of Process Metaphysics Rescher operates with a further distinction, which is crucial to his whole interpretation of process philosophy, between an ontological and a conceptual version.6 This distinction, too, is not uniquely applicable to process philosophy. Indeed, it is fundamental in Rescher’s own philosophical project, as his early defense of a “conceptual” (as opposed to an “ontological”) idealism reveals.7 The “conceptual” approach (which he also calls epistemic or hermeneutic) concerns the mind and the world insofar as it is an object of understanding.8 The “ontological” approach (which he also calls metaphysical or causal) concerns being and “things in themselves.”9 Conceptual processism, the weaker contention, is committed to the primacy or priority of process in the order of knowledge or understanding, while ontological processism, the stronger contention, is committed to the primacy or priority of process in the order of nature or being.10 The former contends that we cannot understand the world without recourse to the idea of process. The latter contends that the world cannot be without process. It is not altogether clear how Rescher’s two distinctions (priority/primacy and conceptual/ontological) relate to one another. Do

5

PM, ch. II, secs. 4-5 (41-46); compare PM 2 on the weak ontological precedence of process: “Process has priority over substance. […] But processes as such transcend the realm of things since there are also substance-detached processes.”

6

PM 27ff., 32f., 46, 56ff., 60, 113ff.

7

CI 1ff.

8

PM 27f., 32f., 56ff.,113ff.

9

Ibid.

10

PM 33.

228 they correspond as two ways of making the same distinction, or do they intersect, creating a matrix of four possibilities? In the former case, primacy would be the same as precedence in the order of being, and priority would be the same as precedence in the order knowing. But in the latter case we would have to discriminate four basic types of metaphysics. In the case that interests us, for example, we would have four kinds of process philosophy (and a similar matrix of types would have to be drawn up for “substance philosophy”): TYPES OF PROCESS PHILOSOPHY

Approach:

Ontological

Conceptual

Weak Version: Priority, but not primacy

1. Things depend on processes (while processes transcend things)

3. Our understanding of things depends on process ideas

Strong Version: Primacy

2. Things are 4. Our constituted by understanding processes of things is constituted by process ideas

Rescher’s examples of pre-Socratic philosophers, all being examples of ontologies, suggest that the primacy/priority distinction intersects with the ontological/conceptual distinction in this way—unless, somehow, Democritus is meant to exemplify “conceptual substantialism” and Empedocles “conceptual processism.” However, Rescher does not systematically explore the implications of such a four-fold typology and does not consider the specific possibility that the questions of reflexive consistency and meta-philosophical coherence may need to be differently evaluated in each case. In fact, as we shall see in the next two sections, his preferred form of processism is the strong conceptual approach, conceptual

229 primacy, which appears in the display above as variant (4), and it is exclusively this version that Rescher has in mind when he argues for the merits of process philosophy qua philosophy. Variant (3), on the other hand, which I shall argue is the necessary epistemological counterpart of any genuinely ontological processism (and may well be the most vibrant— and universal—of process philosophies), receives but scant attention. Its importance becomes clear when we remember that transcendence is the corollary of dependence. In the same way that the dependence of things on process implies that process transcends things, it may be that the dependence of our understanding of things on the idea of process implies that the idea of process transcends our understanding. This possibility will be the linchpin of my critique of Rescher’s version of conceptual processism. Rescher’s approbation for conceptual processism has much to do with his long-standing commitment to pragmatism. For example, one reason Rescher gives that we can understand the world only in terms of process is that things manifest what they are only through processes, processes of affecting one another and processes of affecting us. Things are what they do, he tells us.11 Another, correlated reason is that understanding itself is a process, a physical process of being affected by things and an intellectual process of wagering and emending interpretations of them as the course of experience continues.12 We could say that the being of understanding lies in process, making process the most fundamental “idea of reflection” with profound implications for cognitive methodology and meta-theory. But this fact does not of itself imply a commitment to the stronger, metaphysical thesis that being as such is process, and from the vantage point of pragmatism it is not clear what could support the stronger claim. It is characteristic of Rescher’s outlook to see the ontological approach as conceptually defective. Ontological realism he sees as an attempt to understand the world while precinding from its being understood. But it is conceptually impossible, he argues, to think about the

11

PM , ch. II, sec. 6 (46-49); CP 100ff. What Rescher means when he says “Things are what they do” might be better put as: Things are for us what they do to us, either directly or by way of what they do to other things. This emphasis keeps the notion of power implied in this slogan conceptually ideal. A different emphasis is obviously possible.

12

PM , ch. VII, secs. 1 and 3-5 (123-126; 129-137).

230 world as it would be if it were not being thought about.13 Ontological idealism, on the other hand, avoids this pitfall by identifying the being of the world an sich with its being thought about. But it is conceptually impossible, he argues, for us to give up the regulative idea that reality is different in being from its being thought, the idea of a reality that functions as an external constraint and independent control on our thought about it.14 So in his view ontology is either engaged in the impossible exercise of trying to think the unthought or it is engaged in the grandiose exercise of identifying being with thinking. According to Rescher, ontological processism tends to the errors of the idealistic approach in ontology. It takes the fact that the being of experience or understanding lies in process to mean that being as such is process, dubiously assuming that all being is experience.15 It is thus no surprise that his overriding preference is for the conceptual version of process philosophy.16 In fact, what Rescher understands as the conceptual version of process philosophy is hard to distinguish from the position he has himself been developing for a long time under such rubrics as pragmatic idealism and realistic pragmatism. This position involves a commitment to the pragmatic theory of truth (which, indeed, has close, historical ties with process philosophy), elaborated in the context of what Rescher calls conceptual idealism. Just what is conceptual idealism? Over the course of forty years of prolific output, Rescher has developed this highly nuanced theory of knowledge that uses pragmatism to negotiate between the pitfalls of idealism and realism.17 The Scylla here 13

This is the whole thrust of CI; see especially ch. IX, “An Idealist Theory of Nature.” More recently, see CP, ch. VI, sec. 10 (119ff.).

14

CI, ch. IX, secs. 4-7 (158-174), ch. X, sec. 3 and 5 (180-183 and 186-194); CP, ch. VI (92-121); RP, chs. IV-VI (103-165); PP, ch. VI (91-106); Scep 62, 136.

15

PM 43, 113ff.

16

PM 60.

17

The works noted in the introduction to this paper appeared from 1973 to 2001 and contain articles dating as far back as 1962. Rescher provides an overview of his system in his three-volume SPI. Volume I (Human Knowledge in Idealistic Perspective) presents his ideas on metaphysics and epistemology. A shorter précis of his theoretical system may be found in his “Cognitive Realism: A Pragmatic Perspective on Existence and Our Knowledge of It,” which appears as chapter VI of CP (92-121). Volume III of SPI, Metaphilosophical Inquiries, is Rescher’s most extensive exploration of philosophical self-reference and its doctrinal and methodological implications.

231 is an extreme idealism that denies to “reality” any causal or ontological role as an independent variable or external constraint on the content of our experience and theorizing. This includes Absolute Idealism, as well as the amorphous idealism that results from an unrestrained relativism or selfreferential hermeneutics. These approaches account poorly for the cognitive value of natural science and its undeniably empirical character. The Charybdis here is a naïve, direct realism, which fails to account for the relativity, contextuality, and essential mind-dependency of what we think we know about the world. Conceptual idealism is an approach that allows one to concede the subjectivity and fallibility of our experience without forsaking objective constraints altogether. Let’s look at how Rescher negotiates this via media. 18 3. Rescher’s Transcendental Approach: The Conceptual Primacy of Process In his 1973 book, Conceptual Idealism, Rescher argues that possibility, lawfulness, causation, identity, particularity, space, and time are all conceptual idealities. By this he means that they are entia rationis manufactured by the mind, rather than objective features of a mindindependent reality to which the mind is merely accommodating by having such ideas. The crux of his argument, however, is not that these conceptual instrumentalities are ideal because they are mind-made (which he considers trivially true), but because they are essentially “mind-patterned, and so reflective of their mentalistic origin” (CI 193). Reality, as we standardly conceive it, he argues, is essentially noomorphic. The reader of a book such as Conceptual Idealism might wonder if its author is not altogether too preoccupied with outdated and discredited philosophical programs such as German and British Idealism. A close reading, however, shows that Rescher’s rehabilitation of Kant and the British Hegelians speaks directly to the issues of his day. Conceptual 18

In SPI, vol. I, and in CP, ch. VI, as in Rescher’s earlier works, pragmatism functions as the mediating link between realism and idealism. The theme of a philosophical via media is often explicit in Rescher’s writings. Volume III of SPI concludes with the observation that “Sensible philosophizing involves a complex negotiation between idealism and pragmatism” (249). RP concludes with the proposal to see pragmatism as a via media between modernism and postmodernism that “opens the door to objectivity without absolutism, thus combining the most promising features of the traditional absolutism and present-day relativism in respect of knowledge” (240).

232 Idealism is effectively an apology for the cognitive value of “theoretical entities” at a time when they were in disrepute. But why come to the defense of theoretical entities? The history of philosophy in the 20th century is the history of the rise and fall of foundationalism in empiricism: its bold campaigns and their spectacular defeats, each forcing an ever greater retreat. With each new manifesto of empiricism, the residue of “positive data” grew smaller and more problematic, and the unwanted theoretical entities grew fatter and more domineering. Given the narrow construal of reason in positivism, the end in view was a retreat from rationality itself that declared “anything goes.” In Conceptual Idealism, on the other hand, Rescher appreciated theoretical entities for what they are: indispensable to the business of science and even to the business of life. Most important, they are not all created equal. Some turn out to be more useful than others in facilitating our cognitive and practical business. Pragmatic success and applicative efficacy thus restore a measure of purpose and rationality to theoretical entities, while leaving their essentially mind-dependent nature unchallenged. The ineliminable role of theoretical entities in constituting our reality does not therefore imply “anything goes.” What goes is what works, and we all know that’s not just anything. Rescher sums up his position in just this way near the end of Conceptual Idealism: Causes, material objects, persons, all represent theoretical entities within a framework for organizing our thought about things. They are conceptual vehicles of imputation. […] But if all these standardly applied conceptions step beyond their evidential base and are not justified by inductive considerations, then how are they justified at all? They are justified by articulation through a conceptual scheme that is in turn entrenched on Darwinian grounds and validated through pragmatic considerations. (CI 183) From the outset, then, conceptual idealism and realistic pragmatism were for Rescher biconditional. By espousing a realistic pragmatism Rescher is once again squaring off against those who in his view have scuttled any notion of objectivity and declared “anything goes!”19 What Rescher describes in his recent book Realistic Pragmatism as a “pragmatism of the

19

Rescher views Rorty as the most recent exponent of this kind of pragmatism, which he sees as deriving from William James. See RP, Introduction (xi-xiv), and chs. I-II (1-80).

233 left” reasons as follows: if truth is efficacy in getting what you want, then everything is relative to your desires and nothing is objective; hence, “anything goes.”20 Rescher opposes to this what he calls a “pragmatism of the right,” which reasons differently in a small, but significant respect: truth is efficacy given what your desires are, and this is not something that is relative to your desires.21 Whether your car starts on a cold morning has little or nothing to do with your feelings about it. It is true, in other words, that desire is constitutive of all human projects, including the scientific one. To this extent desire is the independent variable in our projects and success the dependent one. But success does not depend on desire alone. After all, we must adapt our means if we are to reach our ends. Truth is relative to our desires in the sense that they must be presupposed as a starting point, to get the game going, and, to be sure, their specificity will bias the outcomes. But they do not have power to determine success unilaterally. The fact that we must adapt our means implies that success is also a function of the way things are, and that this, too, is an independent variable. We may never comprehend the way things are as such, but we certainly know its effects in frustrating or facilitating our desires. It is for Rescher in this sense that truth is efficacy: Someplace along the line of justification there must be provision for a correlative contact with a self-sustaining and largely unmanipulable reality—an agency that furnishes a “reality principle” quite independently of the drift of our thoughts and wishes. This crucially requisite principle is provided for […] by the factor of the success consequent upon implementing action. Goal attainment—successful goal-pursuing praxis […]—is the ultimate guarantor of validity of the products of man’s endeavors at the acquisition of empirical knowledge. (RP 97)

20

This portrayal is not caricature: “A new opinion counts as ‘true’ just in proportion as it gratifies the individual’s desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock. […] its success […] in doing this, is a matter for the individual’s appreciation” (James 1975, 36). “We say this theory solves it [i.e., the problem of assimilating the novel] on the whole more satisfactorily than that theory; but that means more satisfactorily to ourselves, and individuals will emphasize their points of satisfaction differently. To a certain degree, therefore, everything here is plastic” (James 1975, 35).

21

RP, chs. II and IX (57-80 and 231-251), especially IX, sec. 6 (244-249).

234 Realism, on this telling, is simply a pragmatic and regulative commitment to the fallibility and corrigibility of what at any given time we take to be real. And this corrigibility follows from the fact that under-determination by subjectively available evidence is, according to Rescher, constitutive of what we mean by an objective reality.22 Rescher accepts a classically modern notion of subjectivity as a private sphere of feeling and seeming essentially self-evident and transparent to itself.23 What does not transcend subjectively available evidence does not transcend the subject and is ipso facto not objective. What does transcend subjectivity is therefore inherently problematic.24 It is in essence something presumptive, based on evidence to be sure, but evidence that is by the very nature of the case never sufficient.25 (Rescher’s thinking here is very close to that of Husserl when he construes unfulfilled surplus intentionality as constitutive of mind-transcendent things.) Rescher documents this constitutive insufficiency in numerous ways that all have to do with the perspectival and contextual nature of experience. There is the fact alluded to already that things are what they do—or, more properly, they are what they can do. To say that things are defined by their effects on other things and on us is to say that they are defined by their facultative properties, that they are clusters of certain facultative properties. But to know what a thing’s facultative properties really and truly are, we would have to experience it in every possible context. This is not only practically impossible, but, as Rescher argues, also logically impossible, since many possible contexts will not be compossible, but mutually exclusive.26 Another powerful argument looks to the limitations imposed by the specifically cognitive sort of contextuality we call perspective and standpoint relativity. Just as there is a visual parallax involved in the perception of depth from different vantages, so there is an inevitable cognitive parallax involved in thinking and talking about something experience-transcendent from different

22

PM 130ff; RP, ch. V, sec. 3 (114 -124); CP, ch. VI, secs. 4 -5 (98-103).

23

RP 159.

24

This consequence is precisely what Bergson, James, and Whitehead seek to avoid by rejecting the Cartesian understanding of subjectivity at the outset. James is especially clear about this (James 1912, 127).

25

SPI, vol. I, ch.IX (129-156); CP, ch. II (21-46).

26

RP 159ff.

235 experiential standpoints.27 This cognitive parallax is constitutive of what it means to be experience-transcending. It constitutes for us the objectivity of real things at the very same time that it makes such objectivity something inherently problematic.28 This notion of objectivity is damning to any semantic theory of truth that aims at realism in anything more than Rescher’s pragmatic sense. Necessarily, then, every possible construction of reality is a defeasible presumption, allowable only as long as and to the extent that it works. It thus follows from the basic orientation of Rescher’s “conceptually idealistic pragmatism” that what counts as reality for us is always and of necessity something unstable and revisable. Indeed, by the very nature of the case it is something that is always in the process of revision, something no sooner proffered than destabilized as the available evidence actuates differently over time. So we come, at last, full circle. Rescher’s affinity for process thought appears quite natural once we see that process all along was the key to his own philosophical project. The success of his attempt to understand knowledge as both non-trivially mind-relative and empirically world-referring depends crucially on his concept of knowledge as process. Knowledge itself is essentially a process if it is presumptive adequation in time to an inherently experience-transcendending reality. This explains why Rescher can marshal the cognitive opacity of things as an argument in favor of the process approach in philosophy. Realism, as Rescher understands it, implies the inexhaustible depth of things vis-à-vis experience and knowledge, and this inexhaustible depth implies that knowledge will always be a process of never-fullyconsummated adequation as our presumptive constructions of reality are pragmatically tested over time. The argument from cognitive opacity occupies a prominent place in Process Metaphysics: [O]ur deliberations about our cognitive limitedness have a further deeply idealistic aspect, for the fundamental fact of the literally unending cognitive depth of real things—their bottomless cognitive depth—is not actually a discovery that we make about them. It is not something that we learn about things in the course of experiential interaction with the real. Instead, it reflects an aspect of our very conception of what it is to be “real”; for it is an integral feature of our conception of the real that the actual nature

27

EI, chs. I and IV (3-26 and 101-128).

28

RP, ch. V, secs. 1-3 (126-142).

236 of the world’s furnishings outruns our current knowledge of them. Our knowledge of fact is always in flux. It is not a thing, a definite corpus, but an ever-changing and ever-growing manifold of process. (PM 132) The passage is striking. First of all, we see how process comes into play here in a clearly conceptual and idealistic (rather than ontological and realistic) way. It is our knowledge of fact and our presumptions about reality that are in flux.29 Process is a predicate of knowledge and of the world qua known, not of being or reality an sich. Reality an sich functions in this scheme merely as a regulative postulate, as the concept of that to which discourse or ideation must conform if it is to be true.30 But, given Rescher’s commitment to the modern notion of subjectivity, the practical import of this regulative postulate is, as we see, that reality-for-us is never finalized, that it is necessarily and always a process. In many pages of his recent writings Rescher emphasizes the non-empirical, regulative character of this reality postulate and its consequences.31 This regulative idea of reality, itself contentless,32 is, he argues, a necessary precondition of there being any empirical discovery or inter-subjective communication at all. Rescher is clear about this: [O]ur view of the nature of things puts “the real world” on a necessary and a priori basis. […] Our attempts at communication and inquiry are thus undergirded by an information-transcending stance […]. This is not something we learn. The “facts of experience” can never reveal it to us. It is something we postulate or presuppose. Its epistemic status is not that of an empirical discovery but that of a presupposition that is a product of transcendental argument for the very possibility of communication or inquiry as we standardly conceive of them. (PP 92, 94f.)

29

The passage quoted is embedded in a series of three sections that establish the processuality of knowledge, experience, and communication: PM , ch. VII, secs. 35 (129-137). See also PM , ch. VIII (139-151), “A Processual view of Scientific Inquiry.”

30

CI 169; PP, ch. VI., sec. 2 (96-103); CP 14 as well as ch. VI, sec. 9 (113-119).

31

RP, ch. V, secs. 1-3 (126-142); PhP, ch. VI (90-106); CP, ch. VI, secs. 6-10 (103121).

32

CP 62; SR 202.

237 So Rescher’s argument is, by his own avowal, transcendental. It is a direct and necessary consequence of his kind of transcendental approach that knowledge be an ongoing process. No other mediation of a temporallydistributed Cartesian subjectivity with a transcendentally-presumed transcendent reality33 is possible than a pragmatic one that makes of reality a contentless, regulative principle and of knowledge an infinite process in time. But notice that in this argument process itself must now function as a transcendental category, not as an empirical one. Because all knowledge is necessarily a revisable process of knowing, process itself becomes a condition of the possibility of knowledge and a necessary predicate of everything qua knowable. But a transcendental predicate is essentially incorrigible. In achieving self-knowledge as process, it seems that the mind, indeed, philosophy itself, has finally gotten beyond the transience of pragmatic truth and its characteristic defeasibility. With process as a “transcendental idea of reflection” we have, after all, achieved a knowledge that is itself immune to process: an a priori knowledge that is, just as Kant had wanted it, empirically real because it is transcendentally ideal. How do we classify this approach in our four-fold typology? Must we say that it involves the conceptual primacy of process (alternative (4)) or its conceptual priority (alternative (3))? In a way, it seems to involve conceptual priority: construed as transcendental, process becomes an idea of reflection that conditions, but also transcends all other ideas. However, it does not transcend ideation. In good Kantian style, its purchase is limited to possible experience. Within these limits, the idea of process is constitutive. Rescher’s philosophy can thus be seen as a sustained effort to demonstrate the various ways that our experience is conceptually reducible to process. But that means: reducible to the idea of process. It does not mean: dependent upon process itself as something necessarily transcendent. I shall therefore reserve the label “conceptual priority” for the seemingly paradoxical alternative, discussed below in section (5), of an idea that transcends ideation. If construed in this way, the conceptual priority of process, as we shall see, implies and is implied by ontological processism. They are the epistemological and metaphysical aspects of the same doctrine. But the situation is not analogous if our starting point is the conceptual primacy of process. The transcendental and meta-philosophical implications of the conceptual-primacy approach make it clear that it is 33

The critical distinction, instituted by Kant, between “transcendent” and “transcendental” is carefully heeded throughout my argument.

238 incompatible with a truly ontological approach, as I argue in the following section. 4. The Reflexive Consistency and Meta-philosophical Coherence of Process Philosophy When Rescher affirms the reflexive consistency and meta-philosophical coherence of process philosophy in chapter X of Process Metaphysics, what he has in mind is the evident fact that no theory is ever definitive and that philosophy itself is an ongoing and never-ending process.34 A philosopher who proposes a definitive theory is guilty, it seems, of a performative contradiction: she knows that she has revised her theory over time and that she will continue always to revise and develop it, yet she offers it as final. A philosophy that affirms the pervasiveness of change and process is thus consistent with the performative conditions of theorizing in a way that dogmatic theories can never be: “Process philosophy […] has the virtue of self-substantiation” (PM 168). But right away this butts against paradox. Can a theory “at once elaborate its claims and concede their limitations” (PM 166)? Rescher has treated this question elsewhere in his writings under the heading of the Preface Paradox.35 It often happens that an author, in the preface to the very book where he affirms a certain theory, admits that some of his claims may be, indeed, most certainly are, wrong. How can he avow and disavow the same claims at the same time? Rescher’s resolution of this paradox is intimately connected with his regulative interpretation of realism and his pragmatic approach to truth: “authors who advance their claims in the mode of plausibility can proceed on a tentative basis and need not present their assertions as categorical claims to truth” (PRRR 214). In other words, contradiction results only if we affirm something as definitively true and yet also falsifiable. It is perfectly consistent to affirm something as plausible, as pragmatically warranted, while conceding the possibility that it will turn out to be false. Indeed, performative consistency requires us to proceed in this way at all times. But there is still a problem. If the implication of the process thesis, applied to philosophy itself, is that philosophizing is never finished and all truths are revisable, what about this very thesis? “All truths are revisable” seems to envision its own

34

PM 167f., 170ff.

35

PRRR 213ff.; RP, ch. IV, sec. 3 (114-124), especially 120.

239 falsification and revision. And if not, that is, if it is unrevisably true, it counter-exemplifies itself. So which way should we go here? Should the tentativeness of human knowledge itself be only tentatively affirmed, paradoxically leaving open the possibility of categorical certainty, or is the tentativeness of human knowledge itself something we can, paradoxically, affirm with categorical certainty? I suggest that this is a question about which ontological and conceptual-primacy processism must disagree. Rescher’s treatment of this question in chapter X of Process Metaphysics is one-sided and reflects his own commitment to the conceptual primacy of process. “All truths are revisable” becomes a transcendentally secure meta-truth, exempt from its own scope of application.36 The steps of his argument are instructive. They show that his understanding of reflexive consistency and metaphilosophical coherence are not applicable to the other varieties of process philosophy. This, in turn, will show how far his version of process philosophy is from the ontologically radical thesis of Heracleitus that “everything flows.” While dogmatism involves a performative contradiction, “fallible knowledge” seems to be a theoretical contradiction. If we follow Rescher, we escape the latter paradox by affirming everything tentatively, but we court a fallacy by adding categorically that all knowledge is tentative. Rescher is clear about the fallacy he is courting: “How can [one] say that everything changes and that the world has no permanent features when this condition of ever-changingness and impermanence is itself (according to [this] theory) a permanent feature of reality?” (PM 166). It seems that we have, after all, merely replaced a performative contradiction with a theoretical one. Alternatively, we can avoid the fallacy of self-exclusion if we grant our thesis self-exemption, but, as Rescher also notes37, this has the suspicious look of ad hoc expediency about it: “Everything changes— except the meaning and truth of this claim.” Or: “All knowledge is tentative—except the knowledge embodied by this claim.” But this is precisely where conceptual idealism leads us, as we have seen in the previous section: the process thesis is exempt from its own scope because it is transcendental. However, we are surely entitled to ask a philosopher of process: how is transcendental knowledge possible? Rescher explains its self-exemption from process by invoking a distinction of levels

36

PM 166ff.

37

PM 167.

240 reminiscent of Russell’s Theory of Types “between the domain of facts with which a theory deals and the domain of facts to which the theory belongs” (PM 167). But this distinction can do what it is supposed to do only if there is, indeed, an ontological difference between the facts in the object domain, which are inherently mutable, and the facts in the domain of truths about the object domain, which are (or at least can be) immutable. Rescher appears to accept the necessity of an ontological distinction of levels: a metaphysical position […] is not itself part of the phenomena of nature, and […] need not fall within the scope of its own immediate concerns. In saying that everything within nature changes, we need not deny that certain facts about nature […] may themselves hold changelessly true. (PM 167) So eternal verities do exist. They exist, or subsist, in a domain of special facts immune to process. It is not clear how Rescher’s pragmatic semantics can sustain such a domain. By “a metaphysical position” Rescher is clear that he does not mean the belief in a metaphysical position, which is a natural phenomenon that changes over time.38 What is the position “itself”? Rescher’s claim here is perfectly consonant with a process theory of the Whiteheadian sort that postulates, over and above processes, “eternal objects,” that is, universals as Platonic entities (“Ideas”) and theories composed of these entities.39 Whitehead follows a long metaphysical tradition in seeing universals as constituting an eternal matrix of possibilities. But Rescher is curiously silent about this aspect of Whitehead’s thought and for his own part tends to espouse an adverbial and functionalist theory of universals as the repeatable “how” of certain complex happenings.40 This is really just a functionalist variation on a different metaphysical tradition which holds that universals result from a

38 39

40

Ibid. Questions have rightfully been raised about how Platonic Whitehead’s eternal objects really are. Noting the cogent arguments to be found in Bergson 1992, 91106 [=1959,1331-1345], Michel Weber has persuasively argued that not all eternal objects can be prefigured in the primordial envisagement. At least some eternal objects must come into being in the consequent nature as a result of the creative advance. Were all eternal objects to pre-exist eternally in timeless anticipation of all contingent possibilities, then there could be no creative advance, no real novelty, only a kind of menu selection. (Personal Communication) PM , ch. IV, sec. 1 (69-74).

241 distinctio rationis cum fundamento in re. This functionalist approach, along with Rescher’s commitment to the “priority of the actual”41 and the conceptual ideality of the possible42, makes it hard to see how in some of his more recent writings he can be so sanguine about eternal verities and Platonic universals43. But more important, we have to ask: does this position really have the virtue of self-substantiation? It is consistent, yes, but does it exemplify its own teaching, or does it purchase consistency at the price of self-exemption? Rescher’s solution to the self-referential paradox of the process thesis, “Everything is impermanent,” is simply to forestall self-reference by exempting the process thesis from its own scope. But then this is not a self-substantiating theory of process. It is consistent, but not selfreferentially consistent. It is, on the contrary, an exception to itself. It hypostatizes its own truth as a non-process in a domain of facts immune to change. Similarly, because all philosophies are revised and revisable, the truth about revisability becomes a meta-philosophical finality.44 As reasonable and viable as this approach may be, I can’t help but thinking that it is not in the spirit of the process philosophy that emerged in the intellectual milieu of the mid-19th to early 20th century and emphasized a radical ontology of becoming. As the stream of thought particularly enlivened by Bergson, James, and Whitehead, process philosophy was a process metaphysics, stricto sensu, committed to an ontological rather than a conceptual approach to process, indeed, committed in general to the fundamentality of ontology over epistemology. As such, it seems to belong more to the movement broadly characterized as existentialism than it does to the neo-Kantian, positivist, or analytic traditions preeminently concerned with issues of epistemology and transcendental argument. Along with philosophical approaches more narrowly called existential (Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty), this 41

TP 7f.

42

CI, chs. II-III (27-57).

43

44

For an extended defense of Platonic universals, see PhP, ch. VII (107-122). Noteworthy also is the appearance of the “fixed identity” of persons at PM 117 and of “eternity” at PM 122, to say nothing of the essentialism espoused in RP, chs. VII-VIII (167-229) about our “true needs” and the “true value of things.” All these Platonisms are hard to reconcile with the idea of the universal as “a commonality of programmatic structure” (PM 74) that is “no more mysterious than how distinct birds can share the same song” (PM 73). PM 170ff.; SPI, vol. III, 179ff., 219-249.

242 process philosophy was motivated by an opposition to transcendental approaches. This is the import of “pure experience” in James’ radical empiricism and of “intuition” and “feeling” in the metaphysics of Bergson and Whitehead, respectively. Process philosophy and existentialism share the conviction that the ambient facticity of the world (or language or nature or history) is the transcendent condition of the possibility of the subject and its experience. This is a reversal of the transcendental approach which sees the subject as the transcendental condition of the world or at least of its experience of the world.45 But if the subject and its experience are constituted by a world of which it is not the condition, then there is no transcendental subject and so no foothold for transcendental argument. The proper medium of philosophical insight is therefore what Bergson calls “intuition” and James calls “pure experience,” not reflection. This existential approach must seek the gift of ontological insight—something much emphasized by Heidegger in his late writings. The transcendental approach, on the other hand, views epistemology as a foundational science and transcendental argument as a way of leveraging philosophical truth. Rescher’s focus on conceptual idealism at once betrays his commitment to the preeminence of epistemology. Process acquires importance for Rescher because the adequation of appearance to reality is a never-ending process. Process itself thus appears to reflection as the transcendental condition of such adequation. This is very different from Bergson’s ontological thesis that reality is process (or its Heideggerian variant that being is time). It is also very different from Whitehead’s ingenious refinement according to which each entity is a

45

Rescher does not deny the dependency of the subject on the world, but he distinguishes it as causal dependence from the conceptual dependence of the world on the subject. The upshot of this dualism is precisely that our causal dependency on the world becomes a transcendental postulate rather than a primordial experience. This conceptual/causal distinction is a new name for the old mental/physical dichotomy of classical modern philosophy. It plays a decisive role in the version of process philosophy Rescher defends [e.g., PM 41f. and ch. VI, sec. 2 (112-116), passim]. Yet Rescher seems to be aware that his conservation of this dichotomy is not in the spirit of the turn-of-the-century philosophy we are concerned with, which sought to overcome what Whitehead called the bifurcation of nature: “[H]ere we come to the point at which James and Dewey [and, by implication, Bergson and Whitehead, as well] went astray. For insofar as pragmatism is part of the ‘revolt against dualism’—against splitting the world into scientific and humanistic spheres—the proper route is not that of reconciliatory monism that negates distinctions […], but rather that of a pluralism […]” (RP 187).

243 perspectival concrescence of the antecedent world. For Whitehead, the status quo of the world is transcended (becomes past) by becoming manifest as an appearance for a newly emerging subject of experience. The reality of each actual entity is the time-creating process in which a novel subject is precipitated as the dative for such manifestation. In short, a process metaphysics very different from Rescher’s results if we suppose that process is not the adequation of our theories to a transcendent reality, but rather the reality to which we want our theories to be adequate. We can imagine, for example, a dogmatically inclined philosopher who hopes to bring the process of coming to know to a halt in a definitive and incorrigible theory of how reality an sich is pure process. But this could in no way be a transcendental argument. Epistemologically it would have to remain an empirical gambit. Whitehead envisions process in just this way. It is not a transcendental category in the Kantian sense (cognitively transcendental), but an expressly empirical hypothesis, generalized from subjective experience, about the way things really are in themselves. By the same token it is not really a dogmatic thesis, but one that may turn out to be false: a defeasible proposal about the Absolute, rather than an absolute truth about defeasibility.46 A distinctive consequence of conceptual-primacy processism is therefore its unwillingness to consider the possibility of metaphysical absolutes on a priori grounds.47 But is it really impossible—do we really know a priori that it is impossible—for the course of contingent experience to lead us to an experience that supersedes its own contingency: a history-terminating revolution in “man’s historical consciousness,” for example, or, more pertinent to our theme, a revelation? As a matter of fact, this is something that separates Rescher from Bergson, James, and Whitehead, all of whom took the testimony of religious

46

“[T]he philosophic scheme should be ‘necessary,’ in the sense of bearing in itself its own warrant of universality throughout all experience […]. This doctrine of necessity in universality means that there is an essence to the universe which forbids relationships beyond itself, as a violation of its rationality. Speculative philosophy seeks that essence. […] Metaphysical categories […] are tentative formulations of the ultimate generalities” (Whitehead 1978, 4, 8).

47

“What a sensibly construed pragmatism opposes ideologically is not objective standards […], but metaphysicsl absolutes” (RP 248). Rescher’s treatment of fallibilism and metaphysical realism (RP, chs. IV-V) makes this opposition itself absolute, placing it on an apriori epistemological foundation.

244 experience as seriously as empirical science.48 This makes for a crucial difference between the ontological and conceptual-primacy approaches to processism. By affirming the tentativeness of human knowledge tentatively, ontological processism leaves open the possibility of a categorical truth that is ontological, not transcendental. Before leaving the subject of Rescher’s preferred construal of the reflexive consistency and meta-philosophical coherence of process philosophy, let us note a further concordance between the form of processism he defends and his own philosophical project. Anyone familiar with Rescher’s approaches to the resolution self-reference paradoxes could have anticipated his solution to the paradoxical implication of the process thesis on purely logical grounds, independent of his transcendentalepistemological motivations.49 The fact is that “All truths are revisable” is paradoxical only if we attempt to construe it as true. In that case it either destroys itself by self-imugnment (affirming its own falsifiability) or counter-exemplifies itself (instantiating an indefeasible truth). Rescher notes of self-counter-exemplifying propositions (e.g., “No propositions are negative”) that no paradox results if they are simply considered false, and this is what he proposes to do.50 On the other hand, autodestruction by selfimpugnment (e.g., “All claims in this paper are false”), he considers symptomatic of “illicit totalization” and, once again, grounds for considering the proposition false (or in some cases meaningless).51 Rescher’s treatment of paradoxes thus leads us, independently of his theory of knowledge, to expect him simply to deny that “All truths are revisable,” clearing the way for him to affirm “All truths are revisable— except this one.” Self-exception is thus not something Rescher invokes ad hoc to legitimate transcendental knowledge. It finds its license in general considerations of logic that have occupied him since his work on selfreference in the 60’s. In fact, in the broader context of what Rescher in the early 90’s developed into a general methodology of “philosophical

48

We can mention here James’ Varieties of Religious Experience, Bergson’s Two Sources of Morality and Religion, and Whitehead’s Religion in the Making.

49

Besides PRRR, see also CP, ch. IX (166-185), “Reification Fallacies and Inappropriate Totalities,” as well as TPL, ch. II (14-17), “Self-Referential Statements,” and XIV, “Assertion Logic,” sec. 16 (277-280) on “Inconsistent Assertors.”

50

PRRR 194.

51

PRRR, ch. VIII-X (137-215); CP, ch. IX (166-185).

245 standardism,” self-exception becomes simply one example of the kind of exceptions that are inevitable in a world shot through with contingency.52 These exceptions “prove the rule” precisely because they fall outside its “standard” acceptation. Taking a very different tack, I shall propose that the process thesis is not just “standardly” true and that its unrestricted, self-referential version is not false or meaningless, but true in philosophically important ways. Needless to say, truth cannot be construed here in the classical sense Rescher privileges. I do not deny that the self-referential version of the process thesis suffers autodestruction by self-impugnment. But I propose that autodestruction by self-impugnment is in this case like the via negativa of mystical theology and spiritually-motivated skepticism: not a fallacy, but a vehicle of metaphysical apophansis. What it reveals is precisely the self-referentiality of process: the seemingly paradoxical impermanence of impermanence, or what the Mahayana Buddhists call “emptiness.”53 5. The Existential Approach: The Ontological Priority of Process Despite his preference for conceptual processism, Rescher discusses and even elaborates on several ideas fundamental to ontological processism, which can serve as the starting point of our discussion of this variant of process philosophy. Explanatory power is a cardinal consideration here: static substances alone could never explain the emergence of processes, but process as a primitive category can explain the emergence of substances.54 This is a logical argument for the ontological primacy of process: it is conceivable that substances could be reducible to processes, but not vice versa. But Rescher also adverts to arguments for the priority of process, which imply its transcendence. The crucial notion here is that of unowned processes: 52

On the rationale of standardism see PS, passim; chapter VII (139-153) applies standardism to paradoxes of self-exclusion. The justification of standardism may already be inferred from Rescher’s early—and, I must say, brilliant—essay “A Critique of Pure Analysis,” PrP, ch. VI (107-123).

53

The paradox implied by the permanent truth of “All things are impermanent” was known in Indian antiquity and appears to have motivated Nagarjuna’s dialectical critique of early Buddhism, which remained “attached” to this one illusion of permanence. See Matilal 1971, 146-167.

54

PM 29, 46, 48f., 52f.

246 Owned processes are those that represent the activity of agents[…]. Such processes are ownership attributable with respect to “substantial” items. Unowned processes, by contrast, are free-floating […] and do not represent the activity of actual (i.e., more than nominal) agents: the cooling of the temperature, the change in climate, the flashing of lightning, the fluctuation of a magnetic field. […] [T]he existence of unowned processes is particularly important because it shows that the realm of process as a whole is something additional to and separable from the realm of substantial things. (PM 42) Unowned processes show that process transcends substances ontologically. Grammatically, unowned processes are marked by impersonal or “subjectless” sentences like “it rains.”55 These grammatical forms came under philosophical scrutiny by Franz Brentano56 in the late 19th century. It was most likely from Brentano that Heidegger inherited the notion that subjectless sentences were ontologically revealing, with existential sentences being the most important kind: “there is …” (“es gibt …”).57 For Heidegger the being of something is an unowned process of disclosure and is therefore something fundamentally temporal. Heidegger shares with thinkers like Husserl, Bergson, James, and Whitehead a seriousness about the phenomenon of time, forcing such things as contingency, passage, inheritance, novelty, and loss into the primary focus of ontology. How could substance have primacy in a world permeated by time and its congeners? But more than that, these thinkers share an appreciation for the priority of process, recognizing time as the transcendent process par excellance. Time not only reveals all things, it also transcends them. Time is the subjectlessness of becoming. In general, the ontological precedence of process means that change and becoming are not simply predicates anchored to stable things, as was 55

PM , ch. II, secs. 4-5 (41-46); PP 4ff, 28f.

56

In 1883 Brentano published a review, entitled “Miklosich über subjektlose Sätze” (reprinted in Brentano 1971, vol. II, 183-196) suggesting that Miklosich’s monograph “Die Verba impersonalia im Slavischen” deserved more attention than it had received, indeed, that it had potentially epoch-making philosophical implications for logic, psychology, and ontology.

57

The ontological importance of the subjectless existential sentence is already evident, before the “Kehre,” in Sein und Zeit (see Heidegger 1967, 7, 71f., 212, 214, 226, 228, 230, 316, 411ff.). With the 1947 Brief über den “Humanismus” it becomes the focus of Heidegger’s metaphysics (see Heidegger 1978, 333ff.).

247 the case in Aristotelian metaphysics. For Aristotle, it is always something enduring that undergoes change, and the change is really an exchange of predicates, each passing into and out of existence without otherwise changing. But this is not so much change as the dissimulation of change: change as a second-order effect, a shuffle of rigid predicates, just as for atomism it had been a shuffle of inelastic particles. By contrast, the ontological precedence of process means that becoming itself is the subject, the hypokeimenon, of being, as with Whitehead’s category of the ultimate, creativity.58 In this respect, creativity bears some resemblance to Nietzsche’s will to power and Bergson’s élan vital as ultimate categories that are meant to provide a dynamic ground of being. Being is grounded in becoming. Accordingly, it would be wrong to say of the primordial becoming that it is. We can only express the ontological precedence of process paradoxically by saying that becoming itself becomes or change itself changes.59 Otherwise we must resort to subjectless sentences or to non-substantialist categories like will, creativity, temporality. What’s important is that the ontological precedence of process, however it is construed, discredits classical predicate logic as an instrument of metaphysical inquiry. If change changes, what does it change to? And if it continues to be change, how can we say that it has changed? We see the same problem in the old question about time: if, as we like to say, time flows, doesn’t it need another time to flow in? And if this is absurd, then, as Husserl discovered in his phenomenological investigation of time consciousness, time must be a primordial flux, a self-creating difference,

58

“In all philosophic theory there is an ultimate which is actual in virtue of its accidents. It is only then capable of characterization through its accidental embodiments, and apart from these accidents is devoid of actuality. In the philosophy of organism this ultimate is termed ‘creativity’ […]” (Whitehead 1978, 7). “‘Creativity’ is another rendering of the Aristotelian ‘matter,’ and of the modern ‘neutral stuff’” (Whitehead1 1978, 31). Compare James’ statement that “pure experience” is “the name I gave to the materia prima of everything” (James 1912, 138).

59

Here and elsewhere my argument adverts to becoming and/or change without specifying the difference since it is only the fundamental aspect of passage, of difference over time, that is relevant to the argument.

248 not the change of something with respect to something, but a change that is itself changing, however paradoxical this may be.60 The ontological processism of the 19th and early 20th centuries thus has deep affinities with phenomenology and existentialism. All three recognize the priority of process and becoming in the ontological transcendence of time. It is also characteristic of all three to explore the paradoxical epistemological implications of the ontological precedence (whether primacy or priority) of process and becoming and to emphasize its incompatibility with traditional interpretations of truth and apophansis. Rescher is not wholly averse to this. His suggestions for a process semantics based on his topological logic are essentially an attempt to provide a logical formalism compatible with the ontological priority of becoming.61 It employs a logic in which everything is a process of becoming, and becoming is subjectless. Despite its being a logical formalism, this is the aspect of his work that brings him closest to the metaphysical concerns of 20th century continental philosophy. Rescher does not, however, pursue the epistemological implications of an ontological processism with the same methodical zeal he dedicates to the epistemology of conceptual-primacy processism and conceptual idealism, although his valorization of a logic of truth-value indeterminacy also makes a significant approach to the issue.62 The epistemological issues arising from ontological processism are philosophically trenchant and will be discussed in the remainder of this paper. As Rescher notes, if the world is made of process, then it cannot be known with static categories.63 The burning question then becomes: so how is it known? How is something without fixed identity knowable? What does it mean to speak truly of something totally unstable? How would we know when we had spoken falsely about it? Aristotle claimed that a proposition says “something about something” (“ti kata tinos”) and must assert something definite about it one way or another, something

60

This is the dramatic result of Husserl’s Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins. See Husserl 1966, §§ 35-36 (73-75) and Beilage VI (111115).

61

PM , “Appendix: Process Semantics” (175-182); TPL, ch. XIII, “Topological Logic” (229-249).

62

PM , ch. III, sec. 6 (65-67), ch. VII, secs. 1-2 (123-129); TPL, ch. VI, “ManyValued Logic (54-115).

63

PM 135.

249 which can be and is either definitely true or false. But can we retain bivalence and the predicative structure of traditional apophantic discourse if it’s got to be “about” something wholly dynamic? If so, can we say anything about it other than “it changes”? Is this itself a stable truth? Or another false lead that substitutes a fixed idea for the real becoming? One temptation is to see becoming as something inherently unknowable (as chaos), to see process as knowable only insofar as it is stable and definite—geared and contoured by fixed predicates. This Platonic view is not without its echoes in process philosophy—for example, in Whitehead’s theory of eternal objects. But the opposite tendency is represented in Whitehead’s thought as well, the tendency, along with Bergson and James, to see becoming as what is best known and most familiar to us, albeit in a way that remains intuitive, inarticulate, even mystical.64 A great deal of 19th and early 20th century thought was devoted to the question how something without fixed identity (like pure becoming, firstness, change itself, existence, or time) could be knowable. The most provocative philosophical concepts of this period are all answers to this question. Inwardness, will, feeling, intuition, authenticity are all ways of communing with a truth, of living in a truth, that is not conceptually articulable. What these proposals have in common is a rejection of the notion of truth as correspondence and specifically as conceptual representation. In this regard, Rescher rightly draws attention to the paradigmatic role of Bergson’s reasoning in process thought—if concepts are fixed and reality is fluid, then concepts cannot mediate any adequate grasp of

64

On the mystical or non-discursive apprehension of flux, see Whitehead 1978, 208ff. and 81f.; on flux as the inner being of the subject, see Whitehead 1978, 29, 136f., 150, 155, and 210. Bergson affirms similar positions in his Introduction to Metaphysics (Bergson 1992, 159-200 [=1959, 1392-1432]). “The consciousness we have of our own person in its continual flowing, introduces us to the interior of a reality on whose model we must imagine all others” (Bergson 1992, 188 [=1959, 1420]). On the being of the subject as flux, compare also Bergson 2001, 75-139 [=1959, 51-92]. For James, a principal thesis of his “radical empiricism” is the preverbal givenness of “conjunctive relations” (James 1912, 44-52) and in particular “the co-conscious transition […] by which one experience passes into another when both belong to the same self. […] Personal histories are processes of change in time, and the change itself is one of the things immediately experienced” (James 1912, 47f.). According to James this pre-verbal experience of transition is the very essence of the self (James 1912, 128f., and 1950, vol. I, 330-342).

250 reality.65 However, Rescher’s charting of the currents of 19th century process thought (in PM , ch. I) suggests that he may have misidentified its source of inspiration. While Rescher is right to see Bergson as a thinker of evolutionary process descended in part from Hegel, this is for the most part an academic comparison rather than a historical connection. Hegel’s developed system was widely perceived as conceptual imperialism, as an attempt at totalizing knowledge through concepts.66 Bergson thus belonged to a movement of thought that is better seen as Hegel’s nemesis. The first important critics to suggest that Hegel’s “motion of the concept” was a sham, a shuffle of brittle concepts that failed to grasp the reality of flux and becoming, were the later Schelling and, independently, F. A. Trendelenburg.67 To document this sham we need not delve in to the complex arguments of Schelling or Trendelenburg. It is enough to follow their lead in examining the famous first maneuvers of Hegel’s speculative logic, which we can do adequately in terms already familiar from our present analysis. In the opening pages of his Science of Logic Hegel advanced the view that change, in order to be what it is, has to change to something 65

PM 18.

66

See in this regard Max Wundt’s “Der sog. Zusammenbruch der Hegelschen Philosophie, Geschichtlich Betrachtet” in Nicolin and Pöggeler 1961, 247-253. As harbingers of the Hegel-reaction Wundt mentions the younger Fichte [Immanuel Hermann Fichte], Weisse, Bachman, the aged Schelling, and Herbart: “Common traits of the whole movement [against Hegel] were the following: protest against Hegel’s assertion of the unity of idea (Gedanke) and its subject-matter (Sache) or of thought (Denken) and being (Sein) and so the triumph of formal logic over [Hegel’s] speculative logic[…]. The task of metaphysics is thus to get to being, which is separated from thought. In stark opposition to the universality of the concept, being is understood as particular, indeed, as something foreign to thought.” From this orientation we can glimpse a common interest animating such disparate intellectual currents of the 19th century as positivism and the philosophical valorization of empirical science and its methods, Schelling’s late quest for a “positive” philosophy, the preferential development of formal logic in the interest of a scientific methodology (Wissenschaftslehre), and the substitution of psychology for transcendental philosophy. Some roots of neo-Kantianism are also to be glimpsed here: the opposition of being as particular to the concept as universal is Rickert’s fundamental intuition (Rickert 1915, 31ff.).

67

See Schelling’s treatment of Hegel in his 1827 lectures Zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie (Schelling 1976, 408-446) and chapter III (“Die dialektische Methode”) of Trendelenburg’s Logische Untersuchungen (Trendelenburg 1862, 36-129), which first appeared in 1840.

251 other than change. His example was (the concept of) becoming. If it continues to be becoming, he argued, it is ipso facto an instance of being, not of becoming. Becoming can instantiate becoming only by ceasing to be becoming and actually becoming something not becoming, which he called Dasein, a particular being.68 Becoming becomes Dasein. This may be the most convincing example of what Hegel meant by the “motion of the concept” in his logic, but it also shows that the identity of concepts is the basis of his dialectic, not the primordiality of a becoming that is beyond concepts, beyond the is of identity and its cousin, the existential is of identical duration in time. From Schelling and Trendelenburg on a strong current of thought developed in reaction to Hegel that I shall call western mysticism simply because it sought an intuition of reality in that which was not graspable in conceptually articulate thinking. After Hegel many philosophers tried to show that the truth about being was precisely what could not be captured in a conceptual representation. The Truth, they claimed, was precisely that which concepts leave out: Becoming (Trendelenburg, Bergson), the Positive (late Schelling), Subjectivty (Kierkegaard), Will (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche) Feeling (Bradley, Whitehead), Life (Dilthey), Existence (Heidegger). The ontological priority of process is therefore only one of many examples of ontological priority surfacing in 19th and early 20th century philosophy. It is clear, however, that temporality and eventfulness are features common to all of these 19th and early 20th century ideas of ontological transcendence. In this sense, Kierkegaard more than Hegel, Nietzsche more than Spencer, are process metaphysicians. What unites much of post-Hegelian philosophy is therefore an intuition that truth as correspondence divides rather than bridges mind and being. Correspondence, however, is the most that discursive thinking, that is, thinking with concepts, can ever hope for. The only Absolute it knows is the transcendental Absolute of epistemology. The only reality it knows is one subject to the conditions of representation. The manifestation of ontological priority, on the other hand, is something that, like Kant’s feeling of the sublime, explodes the limits of representation and discloses itself in the manner of a revelation rather than a discursively mediated grasp. This negation of epistemology is seen as potentiating an encounter with reality an sich much the same way negative theology potentiates an encounter with God.

68

Hegel 1978, 57f.; 1985, 69-95.

252 In this light, the valorization of feeling, will, intuition, and poetry in 19th and early 20th century philosophy can all be seen as parallel to the vigorous philosophical interest that developed at this time in eastern religious mysticism, meditation, and yogic trance. Kant had already persuaded most philosophers that our concepts applied only to appearances, not to things in themselves. For many what this implied was not that knowledge of things in themselves was impossible, but that it had to dispense with conceptual mediation. It is therefore no coincidence that the first English translator of the Critique of Pure Reason was Max Müller, the monumental scholar of eastern religion, editor of the historic Sacred Texts of the East series, and translator of, among other things, many Buddhist scriptures, as well as the Vedas and the Upanishads. Like Kierkegaard’s inwardness,69 James’ non-rationality,70 or Heidegger’s “poetic dwelling,”71 mystical intuition is a truth that is lived rather than represented. In the case of Buddhist meditation, the content of this intuition also happens to be, according to traditional interpretation, process and impermanence. This example vividly illustrates what is meant by an impermanence that is ontologically revealed rather than transcendentally imposed, and it may not be as far from the heart of process philosophy as one might first suppose.72 The revolutionary aspect of 19th and early 20th century process thought—the aspect lacking in Hegel or Spencer—stands out clearly if contrasted with classical modernism. With Descartes’ notion of subjectivity as a private, self-transparent, and essentially self-evident sphere of feeling and seeming, it became axiomatic that epistemology is the only possible prima philosophia. Seeing the direct metaphysical

69

Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Book Two, Part II, ch. ii, “The Subjective Truth, Inwardness; Truth is Subjectivity” (Kierkegaard 1941, 169-223).

70

I am indebted to Michel Weber for drawing my attention to the importance of the notion of non-rationality in James’ later thought. See James 1909, 212f., and Weber 2004.

71

See the essay “…dichterisch wohnet der Mensch…” and the cognate essays “Was heisst Denken?,” “Bauen Wohnen Denken,” and “Das Ding” in Heidegger 1985, 123-198.

72

“In […] monistic schemes, the ultimate is illegitimately allowed a final, ‘eminent’ reality, beyond that ascribed to any of its accidents. In this general position the philosophy of organism seems to approximate more to some strains of Indian, or Chinese, thought, than to western Asiatic, or European, thought. One side makes process ultimate; the other side makes fact ultimate” (Whitehead 1978, 7).

253 approach of the ancients as an unsalvageable naïveté belongs to the very essence of modernity. Salvaging the epistemologically unmediated precedence of metaphysics can only mean giving up Descartes’ notion of subjectivity. Exploring the nature of a subjectivity bereft of epistemological privilege is the revolutionary agenda of 19th century thought.73 The process thought of Bergson, James, and Whitehead is part of this revolution. They see process in terms of ontological priority and truth as a lived epiphany of this priority. Contrariwise, a philosophy of process that remains committed to the Cartesian notion of subjectivity cannot concede the ontological priority (or primacy) of process and must continue to construe truth in terms of correspondence, even if this correspondence is attenuated to a regulative postulate. Rescher himself draws attention to his agreement with Hegel in this respect.74 Correspondence is not repudiated, but seen as mediated by coherence (pragmatically for Rescher, dialectically for Hegel). The varied notions of ontological priority surfacing in the 19th and early 20th centuries and especially the ontological priority of process revoke even the mitigated validity of correspondence common to Hegel and Rescher and urge a different approach to understanding apophansis. 6. The Epistemological Consequence of Ontological Priority: The Conceptual Priority of Process We have dealt in the previous section with ontological processism and its associated epistemological problems, e.g., how, in the case of process priority, a reality without fixed identity could be knowable. In asking about the epistemological implications of ontological processism, we have also posed a general problem that is not specific to the process interpretation of ontology. Namely, what are the epistemological implications of epistemology not being fundamental, of its not taking precedence over metaphysics? And the answer to both these questions is, as we saw, that truth cannot be correspondence. It must be lived in the manner of an existential revelation. 73

The reader may glimpse here the reason why I cannot agree with Arthur Lovejoy (Lovejoy 1961) that the critical reaction to Hegel was merely a return to or continuation of the philosophical position of Jacobi. While Jacobi denied the cognitive value of understanding through concepts, he did not deny the epistemological self-sufficiency of the subject.

74

SPI, vol. I, 141-145; Ind 35ff.; CI, ch. IX, sec. 6 (166-171).

254 This brings us to variant (3) of process philosophy, according to which the idea of process transcends the understanding. If we understand the conceptual priority of process in the way I have proposed, it is compatible with ontological processism and especially with the ontological priority of process. Indeed, it is the epistemological consequence of the ontological priority of process: what I am calling its existential revelation. Rescher draws very near to this position when he explains: The conceptual aspect [of process philosophy] is based on the idea that process and its ramifications affords the most appropriate and effective conceptual instruments for understanding the world we live in. And the ontological aspect inheres in the idea that this conceptual state of affairs obtains because process is the most pervasive, characteristic, and crucial feature of reality. (PM 28f.)75 Rescher here envisions a conceptual processism that is consequent to ontological processism. But if what he means is that “process is the most pervasive, characteristic, and crucial feature of reality” as reality exists for us, then we are back to the transcendental arguments of conceptualprimacy processism, and so it is the ontological aspect which follows from the conceptual aspect, and not vice versa. By the same token, what we are dealing with then is not really an ontological processism, but a pseudoontological processism that is really predicated on the transcendental character of process. But if the inference from the processuality of experience to the processuality of reality is not a transcendental inference about reality-for-us, how could it be a valid inference at all? Here we come up against another assumption that divides Rescher from processists like Bergson, James, and Whitehead. The flip side of his epistemological orientation is his principled agnosticism about the nature of reality an sich.76 Knowledge of external reality is always a hypothesis for Rescher. Even if it is a transcendentally necessary hypothesis and even if it is pragmatically retro-validated, it is still a hypothesis.77 For Bergson, James, and Whitehead, it is an intuition. It is a lived truth of metaphysics 75

See also PM 135.

76

See CI, ch. I, sec. 6 (15-24), ch. VI, sec. 8 (114-118), ch. IX, sec. 6 (166-171), and Conclusion (195-197); and, more recently, CP, ch. VI (93-121), e.g., 120: “‘Reality as such’ is no doubt independent of our beliefs and desires, but what can alone concern us is reality as we view it.”

77

RP, ch. V (125-148).

255 that we inhabit a real world not of our own making that envelops, conditions, and sustains us, and ultimately destroys us, too.78 This is the metaphysical significance of an idea of the understanding that actually transcends the understanding, of an experience that transcends experience, something the later Schelling called “the positive”79 and Heidegger called facticity80. From a Kantian or neo-Kantian perspective, this is surely an impossible notion, a contradictio in adjecto. But it is precisely this alternative to epistemological transcendentalism that 19th and early 20th century philosophy explores. I proceed to some brief documentation of this claim. In opposition to the more usual idea—that our knowledge of the external world is a transcendental inference or hypothetical construction from the facts and patterns of our sense-perceptions—Whitehead observes that the inhibition of these sense-perceptions does not attenuate, but heightens our sense of “a circumambient world of causal operations” which becomes all the more threatening the more it is rendered vague by the inhibition of sense-perception: “In the dark there are vague presences, doubtfully feared; in the silence, the irresistible causal efficacy of nature presses itself upon us; […] the inflow into ourselves of feelings from enveloping nature overwhelms us […].”81 At the root of experience is not an inference or a transcendental postulate, but a revelation of transcendent reality, and it is revealed through our very dependency upon it. Whitehead calls this experience the feeling of causal efficacy and makes it the cornerstone of his whole metaphysics. Bergson meditates upon the same experience. He calls it “pure perception” and emphasizes its dependency upon an external world by contrasting it with the spiritual autonomy of “pure memory” in which

78

This claim is argued in the remaining paragraphs of this section. In addition to the passages cited below, see Whitehead 1978, 162f. and 178f.; Bergson 1988, 228233 [=1959, 359-363]; and James 1950, vol. II, ch. XXI (283-324).

79

Schelling 1972 and 1983, vol. II, 337-356.

80

Heidegger 1967, 56, 135, 191f. In his later writings Heidegger spoke not of facticity, but of our being essentially conditioned (“be-dingt”) by the worldly thing (“Ding”), which “metaphysics” misconstrues as an “idea” or “object” conditioned by the subject. Mindful of this Bedingt-sein (our being-conditioned-by-the-world), thinking, says Heidegger, leaves behind the arrogance of holding itself to be in any way unconditioned. See Heidegger 1985, 172.

81

Whitehead 1978, 176.

256 images are, in his view, preserved in independence from material reality.82 If we could eliminate the contribution of memory to ordinary perception, we would be left, he argues, with a causal residue, a wholly positive, albeit momentary content of givenness identically one and the same with an aspect of the world itself at that moment. In this manner “we should pass from perception to matter, from the subject to the object,”83 disclosing the “impersonal basis […] in which perception coincides with the object perceived and which is […] externality itself.”84 In pure perception thus isolated, the role of consciousness would be “confined to threading on the continuous string of memory an uninterrupted series of instantaneous visions, which would be a part of things rather than ourselves.”85 It follows that “the reality of things is no more constructed, or reconstructed, but touched, penetrated, lived […]”86 “[I]n pure perception we are actually placed outside ourselves; we touch the reality of the object in an immediate intuition.”87 James arrives at a similar position through the conjunction of his doctrines of “radical empiricism” and “pure experience.”88 Owing something to the doctrines of Ernst Mach as well as to Bergson, James’ notion of pure experience means that “what represents and what is represented is […] numerically the same; […] no dualism of being represented and representing resides in […] experience per se.”89 What we ordinarily take to be representation or consciousness is simply an “extrinsic denomination” (to use, for reasons that will be presently evident, the Scholastic term) accruing to a pure experience by dint of an external relationship with another, specifically, later pure experience.90 It is a functional relationship that obtains when one experience is affectively

82

Bergson 1988, ch. I (17-76) [=1959, 168-223].

83

Ibid., 70 [=1959, 217].

84

Ibid., 66 [=1959, 214].

85

Ibid., 65 [=1959, 212].

86

Ibid., 69 [=1959, 216].

87

Ibid., 75 [=1959, 222].

88

These doctrines are sketched in James’ Essays in Radical Empiricism. See James 1912.

89

James 1912, 23.

90

Ibid., ch. I (1-38).

257 appropriated by a later one. I see something, for example. What obtains initially is not a simultaneous contrast between seeing and a thing seen, although language suggests this. What obtains is simply the sight seen. But now I reflect on this as my experience. As James says, because I look back upon it and find it “warm,” I “greet” the pure experience as “mine.”91 I thereby appropriate the sight seen as an object of my seeing. Only now can I really speak of the sight as something subjective, as a “content” of consciousness, but strictly speaking this remains an extrinsic denomination. Anticipating ideas of Whitehead, James emphasizes the asymmetry of the relationship of appropriation, which is external with respect to the appropriated and internal with respect to the appropriating experience.92 The position of naïve realism that two minds can know the same thing, generally, that we all know the selfsame “real” world, is thus in principle vindicated because “appropriation is part of the content of a later experience wholly additional to the originally ‘pure’ [one]. That [original experience], virtually both objective and subjective, is at its own moment actually and intrinsically neither. […] it stands, throughout the operation, passive and unchanged.”93 Different acts of appropriation may thus share the same original pure experience, without having to “multiply” it as so many subjective representations.94 At the same time, the relationship to the represented reality that constitutes consciousness is not a mere postulate or hypothesis, because it is internal to the appropriating experience: “part of its content,” as James says. This is James’ doctrine of radical empiricism, which holds that the relations among our experiences are themselves experiences, given with no less empirical authority than the non-relational contents empiricism has traditionally favored.95 Together, pure experience and radical empiricism imply that consciousness is founded on the affective appropriation of earlier world-stuff by later world-stuff and thus involves an undeniable primordial feeling of the antecedent, transcendent world.

91

Ibid., 128ff.

92

Ibid., ch. IV (123-136).

93

Ibid., 130.

94

Ibid., 130-133.

95

Ibid., chs. II-III (39-122).

258 Rescher seems to have missed the crucial significance of transcendent feeling for ontological processism. Although he adverts to the argument familiar to us from Whitehead that the feeling of causal efficacy proffers a refutation of Hume’s critique of causality,96 he fails to draw the further and more dramatic consequences that ultimately incriminate the correspondence theory of truth. Similarly, he does not note the paramount importance that James ascribes to pure experience and its temporal appropriation or that Bergson ascribes to the dilation of pure perception into a metaphysical intuition of reality-as-process. That the lived influx of transcendent feeling is the one epistemological condition of our being able to know about the ontological priority of anything goes unremarked. In reference to Whitehead, this oversight becomes patent when Rescher declares, “Whitehead inclined to regard feeling as a non-relational mode of awareness” (PM 112). To this he counters that most feelings are psychic processes that relate subjective sentiment to a (putatively) objective state of the world in a way that introduces an at least purported objectivity upon the scene. And under the pressure of evolution these psychic processes are realitycoordinated […]. (PM 113) The objective correlative Rescher wants to supply to feeling is, as we see, his preferred conceptually ideal and pragmatically vetted objectivity. But this supplementation of Whitehead’s theory is not so urgent once we realize that Whitehead never thought of feeling as non-relational in the sense that Rescher understands. It is true that Whitehead refers with qualified approbation to Bradley’s doctrine of “non-relational” feeling97 according to which feeling is “the primary activity at the basis of experience. It is experience itself in its origin and with the minimum of analysis.”98 It is even true that Whitehead says expressly: he agrees with Bradley that “experience is not a relation of an experient to something external to it,”99 but this is because for Whitehead the experient has, in feeling an external thing, incorporated that thing into its own self-

96

PM 48.

97

Whitehead 1967, 231ff. His approbation is “qualified” because, after noting that feeling for Bradley is “non-relational” he says straightaway, “There are of course grave differences between my own doctrine and that of Bradley” (231).

98

Ibid., 231.

99

Ibid., 233.

259 constitution. Thus, without being an external relation, feeling is, just like James’ “appropriation,” always a feeling of the transcendent world and specifically of the past transcendent world, which, asymmetrically, retains its independence: Two conditions must be fulfilled in order that an entity may function as an object in a process of experiencing: (1) the entity must be antecedent, and (2) the entity must be experienced in virtue of its antecedence; it must be given. Thus an object must be a thing received, and must not be either a mode of reception or a thing generated in that occasion. Thus the process of experiencing is constituted by the reception of objects into the unity of that complex occasion which is the process itself.100 Whitehead is here deliberately contradicting the principle of the modern via idearum, according to which “objects,” that is, our ideas of things (res verae), are simply modes of affection.101 According to this principle, the manner (modus) in which we are causally affected by things is all we know of them.102 Living and thinking, as we still do, in the shadow of Descartes, it is difficult for us to recover the impact of Descartes’ declaration that the mind is a thinking thing. The revolutionary part of this is that the mind is a thing. For Aristotle and his Scholastic followers, the mind knows by becoming the thing known, or at least by becoming its essence (if the thing is a composite of matter and form).103 But for this to be possible, Aristotle argued, it was necessary that the mind, before it thinks, be nothing in itself.104 Otherwise the mind would modify and adulterate the manifestation of the thing, and, accordingly, the thing would merely effect an alteration of the mind, not a realization of its unadulterated essence in the mind. Descartes did not disagree with Aristotle that the mind could 100

Ibid., 178f.

101

The exposition presupposes as familiar the Scholastic distinction, much valued by Brentano as well as by Whitehead, between thing (res) and object (objectum).

102

Consider the canonical formulation of Spinoza, who defines the “essentia objectiva” as the “modus quo sentimus essentiam formalem” (Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione, sec. 35): the objective essence is the manner in which we sense the formal essence.

103

De Anima, Gamma 4-5, 429a10-429b10; 429b22-430a18. See also Gamma 7, 431a1 and 431b17, and Metaphysics, Lambda 9, 1074b35-107515.

104

“ho nous […] entelecheia(i) ouden, prin an noe(i);” see De Anima, Gamma 4, 429b29-430a2; also 429a18-429a29.

260 become the thing known only if the mind itself was not a thing; he disagreed when Aristotle declared that the mind is, indeed, not a thing (outhen tôn ontôn—“not one of the beings”105). Being a thing with its own proper nature, the mind can know other things only representationally through their effects, which manifest as alterations in its own qualities. The object of knowledge is thus the mode in which one thing—which remains unknown or at best only mediately known—effects an alteration in another thing, which happens to be the mind. Needless to say, in such a scenario the mind and the thing are related only externally. Whitehead’s bald declaration that the object is not a mode, but is simply the thing itself functioning as a constituent in a new thing, obliterates the merely modal character of objects that was the stranglehold of epistemology on metaphysics ever since Descartes. It is no coincidence, therefore, that this same issue—the reality of objects—was the sticking point between Caterus and Descartes in the first exchange of objections and replies appended to the Meditations.106 Caterus sensed what Descartes was up to: banishing the reality of objects taken for granted in Scholasticism. It must be admitted that Descartes, a close reader of Suarez, was only developing ideas to some extent prefigured in late Scholasticism. But by seizing on the most un-Aristotelian elements in Suarez, he sought to destroy what remained of Aristotle in Scholastic psychology. Caterus of course seized on the contrary elements in Suarez in a bid to preserve the reality of objects. The first exchange of objections and replies pits these two sides of Suarez against one another.107

105

Ibid., 429a23.

106

Descartes 1984, vol. II, 66-86 [=1964-76, vol. VII, 91-121].

107

Caterus identifies “idea” exclusively with the Suarezian objective concept; Descartes identifies it exclusively with the Suarezian formal or subjective concept. But there is no place for the formal concept in Aristotle’s psychology. By stressing the role of the formal concept (“the material reality of ideas”) Descartes makes it impossible to preserve the Aristotelian function of the objective concept. Ideation becomes an intrinsic denomination of the thinking subject rather than an extrinsic denomination of the thing thought. The same tension Caterus and Descartes unintentionally bring to light in Suarez is evident in Ockham’s famous vacillation between the fictum and the intellectio theory of concepts. The fictum theory prioritizes the objective concept; the intellectio theory prioritizes the formal concept. It is doubtful that Descartes knew Ockham’s writing, but he certainly knew the writings of Gabriel Biel, who whole-heartedly adopted Ockham’s intellectio theory of concepts.

261 Caterus insists that an idea (=object) has no formal reality associated with it other than the thing it represents. Per se, the idea is merely an extrinsic denomination of the thing, its “being thought about.”108 The idea of the sun is thus the sun itself “being thought about.” Descartes cannot agree with this.109 The reality (=thingliness) of the intellect implies that ideas have a formal reality of their own qua ideas distinct from the realities they manifest. Descartes discovers this formal reality of the idea qua idea by considering the idea “materially, as an act of the understanding,” rather than “objectively,” as representing something.110 Aristotle would have denied, as does Caterus, that such a consideration discovers anything at all. Against Aristotle Descartes insists that ideas have such a formal reality of their own and against Scholasticism that this

108

Ibid., 74ff. [=ibid., 102ff.].

109

It was Descartes who shrewdly introduced the sun as an example here in order to highlight the strangeness of the Scholastic-Aristotelian viewpoint. The sun’s “being thought about” is something that presumably takes place in the mind. But clearly the sun itself is not in the mind, so it seems perfectly obvious that the sun’s being thought about is not “the sun itself under an extrinsic denomination,” but rather something which can properly be said to be “in” the mind in some appropriate sense of “in.” What is in the mind must be some sort of immanent designation of the real sun, its mental proxy or representation, and Descartes calls this an “idea.” Whitehead calls this reasoning “the fallacy of simple location.” It supposes that the sun itself can’t be in the mind because, quite obviously, it’s up in the sky—and no doubt too hot and too big to take up residence “in” the mind. The suspect assumption here is that the one real sun cannot be both in the sky and in the mind. The alternative viewpoint proceeds from the same no-nonsense intuition as the Cartesian viewpoint, although it draws a very different conclusion. It agrees that the idea of the sun and the sun itself must be two very different things—so different, in fact, that it wonders how such an idea could ever introduce us to the thing we are so familiar with. The sun is hot, big, and bright. The idea of the sun is, to be sure, not hot, big, or bright, just as the idea of a dog does not bark or bite. What seems perfectly obvious to this way of thinking is that we could know the sun only by virtue of its real properties and their real effects upon us, such as heat and illumination, and not by virtue of “ideas” that have no reality, power, or agency of any sort. Think of Husserl’s “noema,” the phenomenological counterpart to Descartes’ “idea.” According to a famous passage in Husserl’s Ideas (§89), the perceptual noema (the object qua perceived) has no real properties. Hence, the “noematic” tree, that is, the one we actually perceive insofar as we perceive it, has no chemical composition and is not combustible (Husserl 1980, 183f.). Apparently there are no forest fires in the life-world.

110

Ibid., 7 and 162f. [=ibid., 8 and 232].

262 is the only formal reality that is necessarily attached to them, overturning the last remnants of Aristotelian realism in Scholastic psychology. This intrinsic reality of an idea is, for Descartes, nothing other than its modal incidence in the mind: an idea is the real modification of a real thing (an incorporeal thing, to be sure, but nevertheless a thing). As such it is an effect different in number and in kind from whatever real thing that caused it. By dint of this difference, the intrinsic reality of an idea occludes, rather than manifests, the reality of the thing represented. In fact, the idea can simply do without the reality of the thing represented. The reality of the mind is by itself sufficient to sustain it. The result is, as Whitehead was wont to emphasize in Process and Reality, the problematic status of any reality other than the mind itself (as the subject of ideational experience). The modality of objects and the reality of the subject imply one another, and they preclude the transcendent reality of objects. If the disputed reality of the object is to be anything more than a modification in the reality of the subject, then we must return to pre-Cartesian modes of thought. Whitehead’s denial of the modality of objects takes us back to Suarez, or even to Aristotle, for whom the mind becomes the thing known. Whitehead’s variation on this is simple: the thing becomes known by itself becoming a factor in the actual constitution of the knowing mind. Either way, whether the mind becomes the thing or the thing becomes the mind, experience is a declension of the thing known, not the manner of its affecting us or an effect generated by its affecting us. It is beyond my scope to trace in detail the various ways that different process metaphysicians seek to recover the transcendent reality of the object. It is enough to note that this was their principal intent. As much as Whitehead’s theory of concrescence as the centripetal gathering of the world by prehensions, Bergson’s intuition as pure perception and James’ pure experience preclude the modality of objects by restoring something akin to Aristotle’s “potential intellect,” thus allowing subject and object to coincide in an unmediated feeling of transcendent reality. The transcendent reality of the object is not recovered tout entier, to be sure. This is no fullscale return to Aristotelian realism. But it is recovered at least in a way that is foundational of our being and makes our being in the world a metaphysically revealed primordial fact, rather than a pragmatically vetted apriori hypothesis.

263 7. Conclusion Let there be no mistake: Rescher’s philosophical approach is compelling in its own right, and it represents an entirely valid approach to process philosophy. Moreover, it impressively demonstrates the viability of process philosophy in terms that the non-process philosophy of the AngloAmerican mainstream must accept. This is no small feat. It does this by viewing process philosophy from the perspective of a conceptual idealism. The result is a philosophy of process that emphasizes the processuality of experience, knowledge, communication, and scientific inquiry. Process philosophy is thus brought to bear incisively on the epistemological concerns that logical positivism, critical rationalism, and linguistic analysis inherit from the modern tradition. Nevertheless, to assimilate to the traditional epistemological orientation of modern philosophy, process philosophy must disengage from its radical, turn-of-the century ideas about ontological priority. The result is a bifurcation of process philosophy into disparate approaches that reflects the larger division in philosophy today between analytic and continental orientations. I have tried to characterize some important differences between the two approaches to process philosophy, to make clear that they are not mutually compatible, and to balance Rescher’s emphasis on the virtues of conceptual-primacy processism by highlighting some strengths (without denying the weirdness) of the alternative approach. I recapitulate my argument in the remaining two paragraphs. The question addressed in this paper is simply whether the fluidity of experience is to be understood as a transcendental condition of any attempt to know what is, or is itself an instance and epiphany of what is. Rescher chooses the former alternative. The transcendental approach, however, drives a wedge between conceptual and ontological processism. In general, the epistemological primacy of concepts entails a thoroughgoing ontological opacity. Whether being is a process, Rescher therefore remains agnostic. For him, it is ideation (experience) that is necessarily a process. By the same token, however, the truth about this epistemological state of affairs is not a process. The truth about process is a non-processual being of which we can be transcendentally certain. Historically, process philosophy took the other path at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries—the path of process realism. This path does not lead to the denial of all ontological opacity (as does an ontological idealism), but nor does it lead to the denial of all ontological translucency (as does a conceptual idealism). For Bergson, James, and Whitehead, the original and motivating insight is precisely that the conceptual and

264 ontological versions of the process paradigm are one and the same if process has priority. The process of coming to know the world is itself a paradigmatic and ontologically revealing instance of the being of things. According to this approach, self-knowledge is impossible without revealing something about the world. Reflection is a declension of pure experience. So we have an answer to the epistemological question Rescher finds unanswerable: even granting the ontological priority of process, how we could ever know it as such. The transcendent nature of process means that it both penetrates and transcends everything, including the understanding, where it reveals, if nothing else, at least its own transcendence and ontological priority. If this sounds abstruse, the experience of time suggests otherwise. Numerous idealists have sought to “refute time.” In fact, time is the refutation of idealism.111

111

I would like to express my gratitude to Michel Weber, whose enthusiasm and painstaking attention to detail go well beyond the editor’s call of duty.

265 References Bergson, Henri. 1959. Œuvres. Édition du centenaire. Textes annotés par André Robinet. Introduction par Henri Gouhier (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France). Bergson, Henri. 1988. Matter and Memory. Authorized Translation by Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer (New York: Zone Books). Bergson, Henri. 1992. The Creative Mind. An Introduction to Metaphysics. Translated by Mabelle L. Andison (New York: Carol Publishing Group). Bergson, Henri. 2001. Time and Free Will. An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. Authorized Translation by F. L. Pogson, M.A. (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc.). Brentano, Franz. 1971. Die Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt. Three Volumes. Mit Einleitung, Anmerkung und Register herausgegeben von Oskar Kraus (Hamburg Felix Meiner Verlag). Descartes, René. 1964-76. Oeuvres de Descartes. Edited by Ch. Adam and P. Tannery. Revised Edition (Paris: Vrin/C.N.R.S.). Descartes, René. 1984. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Three Volumes. Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1978. Wissenschaft der Logik. ErsterBand. Die objektive Logik (1812/1813). Gesammelte Werke. Band 11. Herausgegeben von Friedrich Hogemann und Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag). Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1985. Wissenschaft der Logik. Erster Teil. Die objektive Logik. Erster Band. Die Lehre vom Sein (1832). Gesammelte Werke. Band 21. Herausgegeben von Friedrich Hogemann und Walter Jeaschke (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag). Heidegger, Martin. 1967. Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag). Heidegger, Martin. 1978. Wegmarken (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klosterman). Heidegger, Martin. 1985. Vorträge und Aufsätze (Pfullingen: Verlag Günther Neske). James, William. 1909. A Pluralistic Universe (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., Inc.). James, William. 1912. Essays in Radical Empiricism (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., Inc.). James, William. 1950. The Principles of Psychology. Two Volumes (New York: Dover Publications, Inc.). James, William. 1975. Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Kierkegaard, Søren. 1941. Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Translated from the Danish by David F. Swenson (Princeton: Princeton university Press). Lovejoy, Arthur. 1961. The Reason, the Understanding, and Time (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press). Matilal, Bimal Krishna. 1971. Epistemology, Logic, and Grammar in Indian Philosophical Analysis (The Hague/Paris: Mouton).

266 Nicolin and Pöggeler. 1961. Hegel-Studien. Band I. Herausgegeben von Friedhelm Nicolin und Otto Pöggeler (Bonn: H. Bouvier u. Co. Verlag). Husserl, Edmund. 1980. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag). Husserl, Edmund. 1966. Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins (18931917). Herausgegeben von Rudolf Boehm (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff). Rickert, Heinrich. 1915. Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft. Dritte, Verbesserte Ausgabe (Tübingen: Verlag von J. C. B. Mohr). Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph. 1972. Grundlegung der positiven Philosophie. Münchner Vorlesung WS 1832/33 und SS 1833. Herausgegeben und kommertiert von Horst Fuhrmans (Torino: Bottega D’Erasmo). Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph. 1976. Schriften von 1813-1830 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft). Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph. 1983. Philosophie der Offenbarung. Two Volumes (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesselschaft). Trendelenburg, Adolph. 1862. Logische Untersuchungen (Leipzig: Verlag von S. Hirzel). Weber, Michel. 2004. “James’ Non-rationality and Its Religious Extremum in the Light of the Concept of Pure Experience.” Forthcoming in: William James and The Varieties of Religious Experience: Interdisciplinary Papers in Celebration of the Centenary of the 1901-1902 Edinburgh Gifford Lectures. Edited by Jeremy R. Carrette (London: Routledge). Whitehead, Alfred North. 1967. Adventures of Ideas (New York: The Free Press). Whitehead, Alfred North. 1978. Process and Reality. Corrected Edition. Edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne (New York: The Free Press). Wundt, Max. “Der sog. Zusammenbruch der Hegelschen Philosophie, Geschichtlich Betrachtet.” In: Nicolin and Pöggeler 1961, 247-253.

XI (APPENDIX) PROCESS SEMANTICS Roberto Poli (Trento)

Abstract The adverbial version of process semantics advocated by Rescher is discussed. The limitations of the logical approach requires a reconceptualization of process semantics. The new interpretations are tested against the problems of (1) dynamic families, (2) dynamic identities, (3) ontology of processes and their mathematical models.

1. Introduction The various chapters of Process Metaphysics present and carefully discuss a number of basic ontological categories. The Appendix to the volume, “Process semantics”, is intended to provide a formal development of some of the categories previously discussed. Strangely enough, the topics addressed in the Appendix are substantially different from those discussed in the previous chapters. The focal problem of a process semantics, according to Rescher, is that of non existent entities. In his words: “How can there possibly be a namable, identifiable, discussible individual – such as the winged horse Pegasus – that does not actually exist?”1 Besides failing to explain why non-existents should be the main problem for the development of an acceptable process semantics, the solution proposed by Rescher does not solve the problem at hand. Rescher’s first step is the idea that, logically speaking, talking about something is to claim its reality. As a matter of fact, mainstream logical orthodoxy interprets the structure F(a) – meaning: the item a has the

268 property F – as ∃x(x = a ∧ F(x)) – that is: there is an entity x in the universe of discourse identical with a and x has the property F. The wellknown answers advanced by Russell and Quine in the first half of the past century are then considered. Surprisingly, the more recent way out offered by free logics – what can nowadays be called the standard solution to the above problem – is not even mentioned. In a sense, Rescher’s silence is justifiable, because a philosophically acceptable solution of the problems of reference requires an answer deeper than recourse to partial functions, the solution offered by free logics. Many different kinds of non-existent entities, in fact, can be objects of our referential acts. Synoptically: • Past and future entities obviously do not exist. At most they existed and will possibly exist. • Mental (psychological) and social entities do not exist in the same way as material entities are said to exist. • Ideal entities do not exist, because they are not temporally bounded like truly ‘real’ entities are. • A much trickier case concerns nominalized predicates. To what do they refer? Let us consider this last case in some detail. 2. Nominalizations Classically speaking, the subject of a given proposition denotes an object, i.e. something that is independently saturated, ontologically self-sufficient and complete. The predicate is instead something that is intrinsically unsaturated and which requires the former to acquire completeness. Predicates correspond to concepts. By means of nominalization we obtain a situation of the type P(F), where the original predicate appears in the guise of a noun in the subjective position. In this case, F is no longer unsaturated as it was in F(a), but it has the same subjective characteristics as a, except that corresponding denotatively to a is an entity in the universe of discourse. May we therefore say that also corresponding to the predicate F is an object of the same type as the one that corresponds to a? Obviously not. Frege says that corresponding to a nominalized predicate is a conceptual correlate which has individual value and is therefore saturated. Between the predicate and the nominalization of the predicate, i.e. between ‘F’ and ‘the concept F’ to use Frege’s expression, there is a relationship of representation. That is to say, in this situation ‘the concept

269 F’ becomes the individual representative of ‘F’, where the latter stands as the argument and the former as the value of the representation function. Objects denoted by nominalized predicates are intensional entities, or in other words, properties and relations which have their own abstract form of individuality. We thus find ourselves in a situation where there are objects and conceptual correlates endowed with their own specific individuality, as opposed to a lack of individuality by concepts. A concept as such, in that it lacks individual characteristics, cannot be part of any universe of discourse. With the nominalization of F in the sense of ‘the concept F’ one obtains an individual term in the theory of concepts which denotes not concepts but special objects.2 From a formal point of view, the theory of nominalized predicates can be developed in different ways. Some reasonable options are the following: (Abelard =) (Abelard ≡) (Plato =) (Plato ≡)

[∀F][¬∃x](F = x) [∀F][¬∃x](F ≡ x) [∀F][∃x](F = x) [∀F][∃x](F ≡ x)

where “≡” is used as the sign for indiscernibility, i.e., a ≡ b =df ∀F[F(a) ↔ F(b)]. The two Abelard options claim that nominalized predicates are singular terms that fail to refer (to any thing). The two Plato options claim that nominalized predicates refer to entities of the universe of discourse. Cocchiarella (1986) proved that the connections between the various theses above are as follows: • (Abelard ≡) implies (Abelard =), that is to say: indiscernibility implies identity; • (Plato =) implies (Plato ≡), that is to say: identity implies indiscernibility. It is worth noting that Russell’s antinomy requires (Plato =). Applied to ∃F∀x(F(x) ↔ ∃G[x = G ∧ ¬G(x)], Russell’s argument shows that the assumed concept is a non-thing, i.e., ∀x(F(x) ↔ ∃G[x = G ∧ ¬G(x)]) → ¬∃x(F = x).3 The phenomenon of nominalization forces us to recognize how sophisticated must be the framework for developing a formally acceptable theory of reference.

270

3. Adjectives and adverbs From an ontological viewpoint, all the above problems have been mainly discussed by relying on the underlining category of ‘object’. Process metaphysicians claim that at least some of the many problems arising within classically-oriented theories derive from their object-orientation, and that a process-orientation would offer better and easier solutions. In order to test this alternative viewpoint, Rescher develops Quine’s adjectival theory of predication. According to Quine, the problem of nonexistents might be solved by substituting named individuals with suitable adjectives. In this way, singular terms are transformed into predicative expressions. This solution has the advantage of remaining within the boundaries of first-order logic, whereas the above-presented discussion of nominalization requires a higher-order framework. On the other hand, it presents its own problems. In fact the “elimination of substantives in favor of adjectives does not … involve the actual elimination of objects to which such ex hypothesis noninstantiated predicates are (nominally) attributed”.4 Therefore, Rescher proposes to take a further step by “trading adjectives for adverbs”. The move advocated by Quine requires the translation from “Pegasus” to “pegasizer”. Rescher’s move requires the further transformation to “pegasizes”. The subsequent question is unavoidable: What (if anything) pegasizes? According to Rescher, the required “it” ranges on spatiotemporal locations. Linguistically, the objectual expression “Pegasus” has been replaced by the processual expression “pegasizes”. Categorically, the individual substance as transcendent bearer of its determination has been substituted by a location. What pegasizes is a spatiotemporal location. This solution of a clearly Brentanian flavour5 runs nevertheless into serious difficulties. Let us consider two of them. Firstly, if what “x-es” occupies a spatiotemporal volume, what about the points of the volume? Shall we accept that each of its points pegasizes? If we detatch one point, does it continue pegasizing? And what about the remainder? No obvious solution seems to emerge. Secondly. Suppose that no spatiotemporal volume of our model pegasizes. This is as it should be: as a matter of fact, in our bold reality nothing pegasizes. But then, how can we talk about (the idea of)

271 pegasizing? It seems that we have gone back to the very same problem encountered by the mainstream logical framework from which we started. The problem of non-existents may therefore not be the best entry point for consideration of the pros and cons of a process-oriented semantics. Moreover, and to my great regret, I fear that the twentieth-century forms of logic may not be the most suitable environments for developing a proper process semantics. Something more radical is needed than switching from substantives to adverbs. Let us start anew, reconsidering from the very beginning the problem of process semantics from scratch. 4. Types of process semantics To my understanding, “process semantics” may be understood in at least two different ways. On one view, process semantics is a kinematics, the study of transitions from state A to state B (also in the plural: from states As to states Bs). The past fifteen years have seen enormous interest in this kinematic understanding of process semantics, mainly driven by the needs of computer science and formal linguistics, and a number of different formal frameworks have been proposed for it.6 For the philosophically minded reader, the less demanding formalism is possibly the one based on a generalization of possible world semantics. Basically: the usual modal interpretation of possible world semantics adopts frames with one relation of accessibility between worlds; the temporal interpretation based on Prior’s early insights requires frames with two relations of accessibility; the processual or dynamic interpretation requires frames with n relations of accessibility. The latter versions of possible world semantics are also known as poly-modal Kripke models or labeled transition systems. Seen thus, process semantics are a generalization of the logical perspective linked to the names of Russell, Tarski, Carnap, Hintikka and Kripke. Technically speaking, the novelties introduced by the kinematic rendering of formal logic are wide and deep. In fact, the dynamicization of classical (and intuitionistic) logics poses new and interesting problems. On the other hand, it is interesting to note that the language of transition logics is basically the language of the 150-year-old relation algebras.7 Many results are new, the concrete systems under analysis and the reasons for

272 studying them are new as well, but the general framework has been known for ages. From the point of view of process metaphysics, the above ‘mild’ interpretation of process semantics only scratches the surface. In fact, none of the real problems lying behind properly understood process semantics is considered. The problems faced by a thoroughly processual interpretation of process semantics are much more profound than those addressed by the state-transition interpretation so far considered. In one sentence, the basic difference between the two interpretations is more ontological than formal. Figure 1 provides outline of their main difference. Figure 1 State-transition interpretation

Processual interpretation

According to the state-transition interpretation, the basic ontological items are states (represented by the two solid black spots on the left). Processes connect states; they mark the passage from state to state (dotted line). Thoroughly processual interpretations read the situation the other way round: processes are the basic ontological items (the thick black line on the right). Sometimes, they discern a pause in something that may appear to be static items (dotted circles). From an ontological viewpoint, some sort of gestaltic switch takes place between the two interpretations: the one considers to be basic what the other considers to be derived, and vice versa. The first interpretation is deeply rooted in the history of Western philosophy and science. Its basic conceptual apparatus is well developed and has been widely tested, and is now firmly ingrained in our common sense understanding of the world. The conceptual apparatus of the other interpretation is much less developed, for a number of apparently good reasons. The general situation may be summed up in the following thesis: either the processual framework is a weird variant of the basically sound state-based ontology, or it is something like the dawn of a new vision. Those who feel uneasy with such a bold claim may perhaps gain reassurance from the history of Western science: Galilean physics in its early days was precisely something of the sort. The underlying idea is that a thoroughly processual framework may pave the way for a non-

273 exclusively physically oriented vision of science (and of philosophy, as one of the sciences, as well). If this is even only partially true, the lack of a completely developed conceptual framework for dynamic ontology is understandable. Be that as it may, three problems at least are apparent: 1. A proper conceptual development of both frameworks is required (the requirement is obviously much more demanding for the processual one, as said); 2. The development of adequate formal models for any of the two frameworks is required as well; 3. Systematic comparisons between the various models should be developed to bring out their hidden or unexpected features (it may even turn out that the differences between the two viewpoints is less striking from a formal point of view than from an ontological one). In what follows, I shall focus on problems that any process semantics may sooner or later have to face. 5. Dynamic families Most systems derive from the generalisation of study of a single type of movement: that of the planets, or, if one prefers, that of a material point. Mathematically speaking, the simplest model of a changing situation is that of an attractor defined as the minimum in a basin of attraction. The most obvious depiction of this model is that of a sloping hillside and a ball which rolls down it until it reaches the bottom. By obvious analogy, I shall call this model the ‘skier model’. The skier model has been enormously helpful in modeling phenomena of the most disparate kinds. Moreover, it can be easily extended to more and more complex situations (i.e., by admitting a dynamics of the attractors too). Nonetheless, the skier model seems unable to account for many phenomena (cognitive ones among others). Another type of model may be helpful in these more complex cases. This other model I shall call the ‘surfer model’. In the surfer model, the dynamic item is ‘balanced’ on the wave and moves by following the wave. In this case the dynamic item does not converge toward the minimum of potential.

274 In the skier model, the dynamic item follows a family of possible trajectories determined by the slope. Due to the presence of a gradient, the item ‘falls’ towards the minimum. In the surfer model, there are in fact two dynamic items: the wave which ‘carries’ the surfer, and the surfer himself as he strives to keep his balance on the wave. Unlike the case of the skier, in that of the surfer there is no pre-existing slope characterized by a particular minimum of potential. The context is instead that of a succession (a flow) of waves of a certain intensity. This flow enables another item (the surfer) to be transported in a situation of local equilibrium. The former case (skier) starts with a dynamics characterized by the presence of a minimum of potential. The latter (surfer) starts from two stratified dynamics (one dynamics ‘carries’ the other) characterized by a situation of local coupling. In order to have a label, I shall refer to the surfer dynamics as a 2dynamics (short for two-dimensional dynamics). It requires only a moment’s thought to realize that many cognitive phenomena are characterized by a 2-dynamics.8 Of course, the hypothesis that there may be phenomena like 2dynamics enables us to formulate further hypotheses immediately. One may enquire, for example, whether there are phenomena characterized by 3-dynamics and what they are. And what about n-dynamics (where n = 1,2,3,…)? 1-dynamics have proved successful in modeling the dynamics of material points. 2- and n-dynamics may prove to be necessary for modeling the dynamics of ontologically more complex items. 6. Dynamical identities To render the discussion more explicit, we may consider an adequately complex centre of action like, for example, a psychic agent. The essential difference between this example and the cases considered so far is that a psychic agent is a centre of action which has a presentation of itself and of its environment. Note that it is not necessary to assume that these presentations are explicit or linguistic. Given this situation, it is evident that various forms of identity, structured in several dimensions, are systematically active for every centre of action. We may distinguish these dimensions as, on the one hand, the relationship between actual and potential identity, and on the other, the relationship between internal and external identity.

275 Actual external identity is governed by the interactions of the centre of action with either the other centres of action in the environment or the environment itself. On the other hand, actual internal identity is the specific vision that the centre of action possesses of itself. There is no reason to suppose that these two forms of identity must coincide. Their differences, and the tensions that spring from them, plainly generate a specific psychic dynamics. Besides the presentation that the centre of action has of itself, and besides the presentations that other centres of action (if any) have of the former, a satisfactory depiction of the situation must also consider the presentations that any centre of action has of the other centres. It should also be noted that the various centres of action’s presentations of the future modulate the coupling together of the actual identities and the dynamics generated by them. Perhaps the crucial aspect here is the subtle dialectic between actual and potential indicated by the presence of these various identities. To sum up, we can distinguish two families of identities, which I shall call families of ‘direct identity’ and of ‘identity of presentation’. Direct identity is what we can synthetically call ‘material identity’. This is the identity so far described by the sciences of inanimate nature. Compared with direct identity, the identities of presentation are distinguished by their multiplicity. The hypothesis put forward here is that psychic phenomena are phenomena characterized by the presence of a family of identities of presentation. This means that psychic objects are multi-stratified objects which systematically merge into the potential.9 We may therefore state that psychic agents possess a teleological component. Figuratively, a psychic agent is what it shall become. In these cases, the identity of the whole is never currently given in its entirety. Identity is therefore unfolding and constructional. Conversely, the traditional identity of the world of nature is of the type: x is what it was. This yields the idea of identity as permanence – a situation in which it is not difficult to discern Aristotle’s definition of essence. The last two sections have raised a couple of very taxing problems (i.e., the problem of multiple dynamics and the problem of multiple identities). Let us try to devise a way to deal with them.

276 7. The main difference between state-transition systems and process systems The main difference between kinematic or state-transition systems and process systems derives from a different understanding of time. According to the former, time is a parameter; according to the latter, time means ‘timing’. Let us consider the parameter component first. By parameter is meant a structure used for ordering (imposing order on) some group of items. Boldly stated, from a parametric viewpoint, time is order. It is a sequence of states which succeed each another in some manner. What really matters is ‘what comes next’, or what single state sn+1 follows state sn (or which states s(n+1)i follow a given state sn). Ultimately, the fundamental relationship is a relationship of input-output type. For every state-transition perspective, the beginning point and the endpoint(s) are relevant; and important too is specification of what states the system passes through. Process systems, by contrast, unfold continuously in time. They are time. For every processual perspective the important questions are: how fast is the system changing? how does the system unfold in time? how much time does the system spend in the vicinity of any given configuration (the concept of ‘configuration’ in the processualistic framework is meant as corresponding to the concept of ‘state’ in the state-transition framework)?10 The following questions are therefore inappropriate for a statetransition system and appropriate for a processual one: In what configuration was the machine at time 1.5? How long was the machine in configuration 1? How long did it take for the machine to change from configuration 1 to configuration 2?11 8. The ontology of processes Understanding the differing importance of time for state-transition systems and process systems is of crucial importance, if a thoroughly developed process semantics is to be eventually achieved. As said, for state-transition systems time is a parameter. In the case of processes, time is instead a constitutive dimension. Processes are not in time, they are time; they are intrinsically temporal phenomena. The difference between being in time (for example as a series of states localized somewhere) and being time is elusive and difficult to pin

277 down, and not just for the obvious reason that all temporal phenomena are also in time. The problem is subtler than this, however. It concerns the fact that the basic structure of time is different in the two cases. In perhaps rather simplistic terms, we can seek to highlight what from the point of mathematical idealization seems to be their fundamental difference. Time as an external parameter has at most the nature of the reals and is therefore composed of uncountable ‘atoms’ ordered in the usual way. By contrast, the temporal continuum for processes seems to be composed of ‘elastic’ units, or units endowed with some sort of limited ‘duration’. To adopt the usual spatial translation of time, these are units which possess some sort of extension. It is perhaps of interest to note that Leibniz based his infinitesimal calculus on ideas very similar to those just outlined. His notion of infinitesimal segment was precisely that of an extension that is not nil but nevertheless can be considered zero. Weierstrass’s well-known ‘rigorous’ reformulation of the infinitesimals into the usual ε-δ jargon provided a translation apparently able to prevent the mental cramp produced by Leibniz’s formulation. The matter would be definitively settled if the conceptual results of synthetic differential geometry were not now available. Before resorting thereto, let me provide a gentle introduction to the basic mathematical understanding of processes. 9. The basic mathematical model The world is a dynamic reality. Material, psychological and social phenomena are all, for the most part, dynamic phenomena.12 Dynamic phenomena of either sort (as both state-transition and processual) are at the heart of natural sciences. To our good fortune, the mathematics of dynamic phenomena has been closely studied. Leaving aside for the moment the case of a material item moving in some concrete space, what deserves a closer look is the case of an item changing its qualities (properties). The general mathematical framework for modeling dynamic items – that is changing items – can be represented as a manifold I = Q × T, where Q (for ‘quality’) and T (for ‘time’) are two submanifolds of I (for ‘item’). At minimum, Q and T are two sets without any other structure. However, in order to obtain realistic models, it is necessary for them to have some structure (topological, differential, geometric).

278 Consider T, for example. This may be linearly or partially ordered, and if it is then to be measured, it will also have some metrics. Moreover, as the case may be, it will be continuous or discrete. The same applies to Q. More specifically, the structures of Q and T depend on the ontological category of I. Manifold Q constitutes the space of variations, of degrees of freedom, of I: what is called the configuration-space of I. Given a certain item i ∈ I, for every instant t ∈ T, i will be in some position q ∈ Q. The movements of I are the trajectories mI: T → Q. As usual, QT denotes the mappings from T to Q. The elements of QT can be transformed in various ways: for example, with transformations on T which do not alter the trajectories but the velocities of movement. In general, a system depends not only on its configuration-space but also on its kinematics. This means selecting on QT the set K of admissible kinematic movements. In this case, the characteristics of the elements of K depend on the characteristics of Q and of T. If Q and T are topological spaces, one would expect the elements of K to be continuous mappings from T to Q. If instead they are differentiable manifolds, the elements of K will be smooth of an appropriate order. Etc. The eye of the philosopher sees at least two problems in the above structure. The first problem is that items are only seen as qualities in time. But qualities are qualities of something.13 The information on the nature of the items under analysis provided by the markedly classical model that I have just mentioned are only given by the constraints imposed on Q and T. Nothing wrong here, obviously. But one may need a direct, explicit analysis of the items themselves. Analysis of the link connecting the qualities to their bearers is lacking as well. And this too may be welcome. 10. Formal and ontological theories A basic difference between formal (that is, mathematical, logic inclusive) theories and ontology concerns the way in which they consider the furniture of the world. From a formal viewpoint, the thesis may be maintained that universes of discourse are ‘worlds of points (individuals)’. From an ontological viewpoint, the thesis should be maintained that universes are ‘worlds of particulars’. Particulars, in their turn, may be subdivided into many different kinds of items. One possible list of basic particulars comprises objects, processes and stuffs and situations.14 Each of

279 the latter categories requires its proper conceptual framework. This amounts to claiming that all of the above categories are endowed with a structure. In other words, none of them is a simple, unanalyzed atom. Some of the above categories are formally representable by individuals in a natural way (i.e., objects). For others (i.e., processes or stuffs) such representation is far less natural. The next step is to study the connections and the dependences among the kinds of particular distinguished by one’s preferred ontology. A traditional philosopher may try to reduce all particulars to objects (thus becoming a natural ally of the classically minded mathematician). A less biased philosopher will admit that objects may derive from stuffs plus (natural or artificial) boundaries; and that objects and processes may refer to each another. If she is of a processualist bent, she may claim that processes play a deeper (or wider) role, acting like the reference point of the field of particulars, or that all the particulars which are or appear different from processes are properly reducible to processes alone. 11. Synthetic differential geometry The framework briefly described in section 6 may also be used to analyze the dynamics of items. In this case, items are representable as points moving in an underlying space. What really matters is that both cases (i.e., both the dynamics of qualities case and the dynamics of items one) treat time as a parameter, and the given dynamics as a state-transition between states. Moreover, there is no apparent way to connect qualities to their bearer and to distinguishing among ontologically different kinds of bearers (say, objects from processes). Synthetic differential geometry (SDG) may be a possibility. The basic move of SDG is to change the concept of point. More precisely, SDG modifies the concept of infinitesimal quantity. According to SDG, an infinitesimal quantity can be taken to be a straight microsegment “just long enough to have a slope … but too short to bend. It is thus an entity possessing (location and) direction without magnitude, intermediate in nature between a point and a Euclidean straight line”.15 As far as time is concerned, Bell notes that it “can be regarded as a plurality of smoothly overlapping timelets each of which may be held to represent a ‘now’ (or ‘specious present’) and over which time is … still passing”.16

280 Let us label ‘smooth’ the world as described by SDG. Among the results arising from its perspective, we should note the following: 1. In a smooth world any interval is indecomposable in the sense that it cannot be split in any way whatsoever into two disjoint nonempty parts;17 2. In a smooth world several distinct but possibly coincident proximity relations (algebraic, order-like and logical) can be distinguished.18 The new theory provides the conceptual background for development of a non-speculative, mathematically-based theory of tendency and potentiality. Classically speaking, the life trajectory of actual items is characterized by the specific direction that it assumes at any one of its points and by the range of possibilities insisting on them. The matter becomes clearer if we consider respectively (i) the points of the trajectory as giving a vector in a state space and (ii) the set of points that can be arrived at from any specific point in one single step and for any specific set of global constraints insisting on the state space. On the other hands, linelets are too small to have either possibilities or directions. Instead, they have potentiality and tendency, the latter being considered the micro-degree of the former. Also to be noted is that the reformulation of infinitesimal calculus provided by SDG does not alter the results of the calculus. SDG clarifies the conceptual bases of calculus − and in doing so opens the way for new previously unforeseeable developments − but it does not modify the results of old-style calculations. One may care to remember that Copernican astronomy did not modify the results of Ptolemaic astronomy as well. The former only provided a better - ontologically more solid – framework than did the latter. 12. Intuitionism The price to be paid for these results is the failure of the law of excluded middle.19 In other terms, classical logic should be replaced by other kinds of logic. As Bell claims, the failure of the law of excluded middle “suggests that it was the unqualified acceptance of the correctness of this law, rather than any inherent logical flaw in the concept of infinitesimal

281 itself, which for so long prevented that concept from achieving mathematical respectability”.20 The brief mathematical journey we have so far undertaken has therefore ended with a logically relevant result: classical logic is unfit for a properly dynamical framework. At best, it may be generalized so as to fit the needs of a state-transition theory. We are still far from an adequately developed dynamic framework. In this sense, intuitionism is patently not the last word. In fact, intuitionisms may be seen as only a first step in a possibly very long journey. But, without intuitionism (and SDG), the journey does not start at all.21 13. Kinds of points As said, SDG is a first step on a long journey. To foresee our destination, let me envisage some possible scenarios. A framework able to represent both state-transition and processual dynamics will obviously be highly desirable. The elements of a state-transition system are static items. Their only admissible variation is the passage from one state to the subsequent one. Much more interesting is the case of SDG, where the items are, in a sense, elastic and display some kind of variation, according to some pattern. The obvious next step is the one in which even the pattern of variation exhibits degrees of variation. State-transition dynamics comprise the lowest positive degree of (internal) variation. Let us call its items thin points,22 which is meant points with a poor structure. An example may be of help. Consider the reals as modeled by a complete ordered field. Here, both order and algebraic structure are present, and the only automorphism is the identity automorphism.23 This is an example of what I mean by ‘poor structure’. The traditional response to this situation is to consider a different model which takes the reals to be an unbounded ordered set with denumerably dense subsets. In this case, the continuum only has the order structure, and there are obviously many automorphisms of this structure. In a sense, this is an example of a rich structure. Unfortunately, this is not the kind of richness we are looking for, because it is still external to its points. What is required is a framework suitable for analysis of the points of a smooth world. As should be clear from § 7 above, accepting SDG is something like passing from thin points

282 to thick points, or in other words, passing from points with a poor category of automorphisms to ones with a richer category of automorphisms. Suppose now that it is possible further to enrich the category of automorphisms insisting on the reals by adding new kinds of morphisms. By so doing we obtain a new category of reals which, for the time being, I shall call ‘processual reals’. If we adopt the phenomenologist’s viewpoint, there must be at least three different kinds of automorphism insisting on processual reals. For convenience, we may call these morphisms of disposition, of memory and of anticipation. Dispositions concern the way in which a processual point reacts to incoming information. They pre-select the possible answers. Memories concern those morphisms which deal with the traces of the point’s past history. Anticipations regard envisaged future achievements. Suppose for instance a way is found to add automorphisms able formally to codify the variations undergone by the point. If so, it is possible to reconstruct the history of the point starting from the information embedded within the point itself. Put otherwise: by starting from the actually given point, it is possible to reconstruct those fragments of its past history that have left some kind of trace in the point itself.24 Some consequences follow: 1. The points of the processual continuum are thick. In other words, they have a significantly rich structure. 2. The new theory of infinitesimals referred to above may be considered an initial step in the direction I have envisaged. 3. From the presence of the above mentioned morphisms of memory, disposition and anticipation it follows that processual points depend on their ‘life’: different instances of processual points may have different stories. The ideas sketched in previous sections can be taken as a phenomenologically based re-proposal of the Erlangen program. It may be known that the latter is now incorporated in a generalized form by the mathematical theory of categories. Category theory becomes the natural framework for a process semantics theory. It may be recalled that the original ideas behind SDG can be traced back to Bill Lavwere, one of the founding fathers of category theory, and that its development is mainly due to categorically minded mathematicians. Moreover, category theory is the richest and most flexible known framework for integrating algebra and topology. Boldly: it is the

283 best known framework for putting logicians in touch with scholars well versed in any other mathematical field. Lastly, the internal logic of many interesting categories (toposes, among others) is intuitionistic logic. Classical logic may be validated by a topos only if particular conditions are assumed. In other words, the most general internal logic of toposes is the intuitionistic one. In still other words, classical logic has a mainly local nature. 14. Thick points are value-bearers State-transition process semantics adopts the Galilean viewpoint (known as the Erlangen program in mathematics): knowing an item means knowing its answers. To know something, one has to place it in some context (often called experiment, or theory) and test it accordingly. The item’s answers exhibit its nature. Boldly: the item is its answers. Generally speaking, the above “let’s try and see” methodology is fair enough. But there are cases in which it is flawed, if not utterly unacceptable (wrong). Consider one extreme case. Any human being can be properly considered a social atom. Let us moreover assume that the dynamics of social atoms produce societies, from micro transient encounters (greetings, card games, etc) to the most structured ones (political and legal institutions, etc). Finally, let us assume that a social atom is defined by what it does. In most cases, this fits perfectly. Now suppose that any of such atoms – after, say, a car accident – loses all its communicative capacities (no sight, no hearing, no speech, no movement). It is alive, but it cannot communicate. According to the “an item is its answers” methodology, it is no longer a social atom. From a pragmatistic viewpoint, this conclusion may be acceptable. I reject it. Let us suppose that the above conclusion is unwelcome. What can we do? I am able to envision only two possibilities: either social atoms have an irreducible substance-like nature (the traditionalist viewpoint), or social atoms – like any other atoms – are thick. Otherwise stated, atoms have internal structure. The fact that an atom is unable to activate any communication channels does not imply that it is gone. Leibniz may have been wrong in many respects, but his idea of monads as complex atoms is one of his enduring contributions to our understanding of reality. Even if his mathematics and his philosophy are thoroughly intertwined, the link has long been missing between the monadological viewpoint and the ideology of differential calculus, two of

284 his greatest theories. The concept of thick atom, endowed with tendency and potentiality, is possibly the first mathematically rigorous implementation of the idea of monad. From this it is a short step to the further conclusion that grown points are value-bearers. Therefore, they cannot be cancelled-out without harm.25 15. Conclusion Process semantics is a demanding subject. It may be approached from different viewpoints.26 The one chosen by Rescher in the Appendix to his Process Metaphysics has been the problem of non-existents. I have instead claimed that the problem of process semantics should be addressed from the point of view of the furniture of the world. After all, the underlying issue is the choice between object and process as the basic category of one’s preferred ontology. Moreover, I feel unable to share the analytic belief (apparently shared by Rescher) that logic is the conceptually most versatile and philosophically most fundamental tool. I would instead propose category theory as the main formal conceptual framework for understanding reality. The conceptual and formal problems briefly described in previous sections provide a few basic examples. Interactions between mathematics at large and logics may obviously prove fertile as well. I have tried to show that at least some of the basic issues of process semantics require ideas and tools arising from advanced contemporary mathematics. Insofar as formal codifications require a previous ontological understanding of the phenomena to be modeled, process philosophy may bring needed grist to the mathematical mill. But as far as contemporary philosophy is concerned, the philosopher should learn to look at what mathematicians have in store.

285 Notes 1. Rescher 1996, pp. 175-176. 2. For detailed treatment of the topic the obligatory reference is Cocchiarella 1986. 3. Cocchiarella 1986, p. 176. 4. Rescher 1996, p. 177. 5. Brentano 1981. 6. Useful surveys are Harel 1984 and Muskens, van Benthem and Visser 1997. The recent Harel, Kozen and Tiuryn 2000 provides a good introduction to the field from the viewpoint of computer science. 7. Marx, Polos and Masuch 1996, p. xi; Muskens, van Benthem and Visser, 1997, p. 620. 8. The case of the specious present is a striking example. Rescher 1996 notes in various passages that the specious present is a demanding problem for any processualistic viewpoint (well, for any viewpoint whatever). 9. Process-based philosophy shares with state-based philosophy a serious underestimation of the problem of levels of reality. For an analysis of the basic problems of the theory of levels see Poli 2001a. 10. The difference between state-transition and dynamic processes underlies Rescher 1996 as well. Unfortunately, Rescher veers frequently between the two interpretations and does not offer his reader an explicit analysis of their differences. In the context of branching time, the above difference may possibly (and partially) be traced back to the difference between “branching in time” and “branching of time” as presented in Rescher and Urquhart 1971, pp. 73-74. 11. van Gelder and Port 1995. 12. Material (physical, chemical, biological), psychological (presentative and representative) and social (educational, legal, business, sporting, etc) phenomena refer to different strata and layers of reality. A theory of the levels (strata plus their own layers) is required for understanding their many forms of connection. See the above cited Poli 2001a. 13. I agree with Rescher that processes can be unowned. On the other hands, qualities depend on their bearer, or arise from the interactions among bearers or between bearers and their environment. In the latter cases, they depend on processes, in the former they depend on something else and the nature of this latter item will depend on the accepted ontology (it may be a process, an object, a stuff or whatever particular is accepted by an ontology; see section 7). Anyway, processes play a substantial role. 14. In Poli 2001b, I have distinguished 8 different kinds of particulars: objects, processes, stuffs, disturbances, temporal and spatial groups, temporal and spatial mixtures (terminology slightly different from the one adopted here). 15. Bell 1998, p. 10. 16. Bell 1998, p. 10. 17. Bell 1998, 32. 18. Bell 1998, 93. Two more items of information are of general interest, namely that (a) the basic constructions of infinitesimal analysis can be cast in a form that is simpler and much more intuitive than the classical one, and that in a smooth world

286 decompositions like those underlying the Banach-Tarski paradox are provably false. For details see again Bell 1998. 19. The point was foreshadowed by Peirce as well: “if we are to accept the common idea of continuity … we must either say that a continuous line contains no points or … that the principle of excluded middle does not hold of these points. The principle of excluded middle applies only to an individual … but places being mere possibilities without actual existence are not individuals” (from a note written in 1903). Quoted by Bell 1998, p. 6. 20. Bell 1998, 15. 21. A further technical observation is relevant. It can be proved that the smooth continuum can be decomposed into two disjoint nonempty parts by removing a point from it. This is not true for the intuitionistic continuum, which is splittable only if at least a segment is taken off. This means that the smooth continuum is somehow intermediate between the classical and the intuitionistic continuum (cf. Bell 2001). 22. The ‘thin-thick’ terminology is borrowed from Albertazzi 2002. 23. ‘Automorphism’ and the subsequent ‘category’ are technical terms of the mathematical theory of categories. Very roughly, and without any mathematical detail, ‘automorphism’ may be understood as ‘variation’ of the items of a category (within the same category), and ‘category’ may be taken as ‘theory’. The automorphisms insisting on an item themselves form a category. Macnamara and Reyes 1994 contains a basic introdution and a few cognitive-oriented applications of category theory. 24. For reconstruction of the past from the symmetries of the present see Leyton 1992. 25. Reference to grown or lived points is mandatory for avoiding the strictures of fundamentalists. The difference between ungrown and grown points may be grounded in the difference between potentiality and possibility, a difference absent from contemporary discussions. To make a long story short, possibilities are constrained potentialities. The former alone may constitute realities, in the following sense: realities are paths in a space of possibilities (see section 6 above). A states-transition understanding of processes may remain with possibilities. But possibilities are not enough for a thoroughly dynamic understanding of processes. 26. Among other things, proper awareness of the develoment of process philosophy may provide better understanding of the theory. In this regard, the ample conceptual and historical reconstruction offered by Rescher displays an interesting cognitive blindness. It is obviously true that process philosophy has been a significant component of American philosophy (as widely proved by the names, among many others, of Peirce, Whitehead, Pepper, Ushenko and Hartshorne). But it is equally true that process philosophy (granted, under different denominations) has been a significant component of European philosophy as well, as proved by the names of Brentano, Husserl, and Hartmann (among many others). Incomprehensibly, none of them is ever quoted in Rescher’s otherwise stimulating book.

287 References Albertazzi, Liliana. 2002. “Continua”, in L. Albertazzi, ed., Unfolding Perceptual Continua (Amsterdam, Benjamins). Bell, John. 1998. A Primer of Infinitesimal Analysis (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Bell, John. 2001. “The Continuum in Smooth Infinitesimal Analysis”. In Reuniting the Antipodes – Constructive and Nonstandard Views of the Continuum (Dordrecht, Kluwer). Brentano, Franz. 1981. The Theory of Categories (Den Haag, Nijhoff). Cocchiarella, Nino. 1986. Logical Investigations of Predication Theory and the Problem of Universals, Bibliopolis, Naples. Harel, David. 1984. “Dynamic Logic” in D. Gabbay and F. Günther (eds.), Handbook of Philosophical Logic (Dordrecht, Reidel), vol. II, pp. 497-604. Harel, David, Kozen, Dexter and Tiuryn, Jerzy. 2000. Dynamic Logic (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press). Leyton, Mychael. 1992. Symmetry, Causality, Mind (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press). Macnamara, John and Reyes, Gonzalo. 1994. The Logical Foundation of Cognition (Oxford, Oxford University Press). Marx, Laarten, Polos, Laszlo and Masuch, Michael. 1996. Arrow Logic and Multimodal Logic (Stanford, CSLI Publications). Muskens, Reinhard, van Benthem, Johann and Visser, Albert. 1997. “Dynamics”, in J. van Benthem and A. ter Meulen (eds.), Handbook of Logic and Language (Amsterdam, Elsevier; Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press), pp. 587-648. Poli, Roberto (2001a). “The Basic Problem of the Theory of Levels of Reality”. Axiomathes, 12, 3-4, pp. 261-283. Poli, Roberto (2001b). Alwis. Ontology for Knowledge Engineers, Ph.D. Thesis (Utrecht). Rescher, Nicolas (1996). Process Metaphysics. An Introduction to Process Philosophy (New York, State University of New York).

288 Rescher, Nicholas and Urquhart, Alisdair (1971). Temporal Logic (Wien, Springer Verlag). van Dalen, Dirk (1999). Mystic, Geometer, and Intuitionist. The Life of L.E.J. Brouwer, vol 1. The Dawning Revolution (Oxford, Clarendon Press). van Gelder, Tymothy. and Port, Robert (1995). “It’s about Time: An Overview of the Dynamical Approach to Cognition”, in R. Port and T. van Gelder (eds.), Mind as Motion (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press), pp. 1-43.

REPLIES Nicholas Rescher (Pittsburgh)

I am grateful to my colleagues who have contributed to this volume for the time and thought they have devoted to their critique of various parts of my work. Goethe once remarked to Eckermann that: “What we agree with leaves us inactive, but contradiction makes us productive.”1 How true this is! It should thus occasion no surprise that in writing my responses I have focused on those issues where the commentators most sharply disagree with my views. In philosophy, above all, disagreement is a stimulus and criticism a mode of collaboration. I would, however, like to make one preliminary observation regarding the business of philosophical critique. The type of critic I have in mind here is one whose discussion proceeds by looking at the topics being addressed by an author and asking: “How do I myself see the problem-field at issue and how would I address it?” And he then proceeds to complain that the author at issue has not written that—the critic’s own—book. The critic’s grinding star is thus his own conception of the topic. What the author’s conception is and whether his book manages to accomplish the task that its author set for himself is something that is pretty much absent from the critic’s agenda. And so in the present case he feels free to complain (with Michael Hampe) that a book geared to the process-philosophical tradition Heraclitus-Leibniz-Whitehead does not discuss “the philosophy of life that can be found in the thought of Nietzsche, Dilthey, and Simmel.” All I can say here is, to quote from Matthew: “sufficient unto the day are the problems thereof.”

1

See Goethe’s Conversations with Eckermann, Wednesday, March 28, 1827.

290 1. Hampe on Process History As Michael Hampe rightly stresses, there are decidedly different ways of writing philosophical history. The prime prospects here include: •The doxographic which describes the teaching—the theses and doctrines espoused by various writers: X maintains this; Y maintains that. •The problematic which sets out a problem or issue and gathers together in historical sequence the proposed solutions of various writers. •The thematic which identifies a group of themes, topics, or ideas and describes in historical succession views of various writers that bear on this issue. •The dramatic which identifies a plot story-line and traces its development throughout the period of philosophical history at issue, seeking to exhibit a rationally coherent unity of unfolding development throughout. The somewhat ironic fact is that in Hampe’s discussion of my position this survey of alternatives excludes the third, which is in fact the alternative adopted in my book and which—as I see it—is best suited for dealing with the sort of general trend or tendency of thought that is at issue with process philosophy. Moreover, an important cross-classificatory distinction is also at work in philosophical history, namely that between a productive and a reactive account. The former focuses upon the teachings of the philosophers at issue, the latter upon reaction on the part of others to these teachings. These reactions themselves will be of two types, representing either responses by other philosophers (by way of development or refutation) or the reception by the larger community of intellectuals to the works at issue. And here most philosophical history invokes a mixture of the productive and responsive modalities, although my own very brief account of the history of process thought focuses almost extensively on the former, thereby manifesting a significant incompleteness to which Hampe kindly turns a blind eye. Of course most philosophical history as actually written involves a mixture of these ideal types, and the fact that my brief account of the history of process thought combines the doxographic and the theoretic means that Hampe’s assertion that it is doxographic in nature is only partly but not entirely accurate. Hampe’s most serious complaint about my sketch of the history of process metaphysics is that it is incomplete in omitting such analytic processists Quine and Sellars. Here the easy (and clearly unsatisfactory) reply is open to me that in a brief book one cannot do everything and that,

291 after all, both of these thinkers do receive mention in the book—albeit only in footnotes. The more serious response, however, is that as the book’s very title (Process Metaphysics) indicates, it is with the metaphysical aspects of processual thought that I was principally concerned and that, as Hampe himself writes, “it is mainly their scientific realism that led them (Quine and Sellars) to a degradation of the categories of metaphysics.” But even this, I admit, may be more of an excuse than an exculpation. And the same line could be extended from the analytic to the Continental tradition, where an even more telling register of omissions could be compiled. But of course as long as one’s prime concern is (as it indeed was, for better or worse) with a certain particular sector of the tradition, such omissions have to be expected. For within the confines of a few pages there is only so much one can do. I do, however, fully recognize that a larger issue looms here because in the present era the historiography of philosophy is very badly skewed. We have a great many careful scholarly studies of the particular texts of particular philosophers. But what one would also decidedly like to have is a great deal more by way of a problem-oriented history along the lines of Trendelenburg’s Geschichte der Kalegorienlebre in the nineteenth Century or Wesley Salmon’s Four Decades of Scientific Explanation in the twentieth. And what we specifically need is a good history of process thought from the Presocratics to our own day. The obligatory nod in this direction in the brief sketch of less than twenty pages in the opening chapter of my book is not a substitute for this and was certainly never conceived of as such. I fully realize a large and important work remains to be done in this connection—and realize too (with regret) that it will have to be done by someone else. 2. Decock on Change As Lieven Decock sees it, a process metaphysics of physical change is firmly substantiated by modern physics. However, this thesis with which many processists, myself included, are in full agreement, is more controversial than he seems to recognize. For it means that the classically aprioristic metaphysics that is widely popular among the analytic metaphysicians of our day has to be abandoned. In its place one then has to revive the idea, often imputed to the Aristotelian philosophers of Alexandrian antiquity, that metaphysics literally comes after physics in setting out the larger lessons that emerge from the study of nature as such.

292 Metaphysics so conceived is no longer an abstract, purely theoretical enterprise but one whose concepts and principles are rooted in physics. Accordingly, it proceeds from the bottom up, so to speak, because its teachings emerge from those of physics itself. Notwithstanding this view of the matter, Decock frets about a stumbling block here: Though various features of modern physics . . . fit nicely with a processual view, it remains difficult to identify processes precisely [in point of their make-up]. The best candidate for basic processes, i.e., the elementary constituents of an ontology of processes, are the interactions between elementary particles . . . However, providing a straightforward interpretation of these [elementary] process is not evident. Yet, even apart from the consideration that virtually nothing whatever in this domain is actually evident, I deem this objection to be deeply questionable. For I am deeply sceptical about the idea of “basic processes.” Surely there is not adequate warrant for holding that processism must insist that all processes must be reducible to elementary constituents—that the idea of a physical ontology that is processualistic “all the way down” is unworkable and unsatisfactory. For there is nothing inherent in the nature of process philosophy as such that blocks the prospect of processes constituted by ever more suitable sub-processes. Process atomism is a possible prospect but not a necessary one. (On this issue see also my discussion of Cobb’s paper.) An aspect of Decock’s critique that I find provocative is his complaint that “it is hard to see how the modal framework [of talk of possibilities and potentialities] and process philosophy fit together.” But why so difficult? It is surely inevitable that they must fit together. For clearly there are processes that must engender a certain particular result and also processes that may do so. Clearly the world’s possibilities (physical possibilities) and the potentialities of its constituents (mind inclined beings included) have to be provided for within the converse of its processes. A process philosophy that cannot underwrite a suitable framework for modal deliberations would thereby betoken its own inadequacy. And in particular as process ontology whose intelligent beings cannot devise a necessitarian mathematics rooted in their apprehension of patterned structure in their world would be in serious difficulty. Decock may well be right in complaining that process philosophy at large has neglected the philosophy of mathematics (although this cannot, of course, be said of all process philosophers as long as Plato and

293 Whitehead are reckoned among them). But given the focus of process philosophy on the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of man, this is understandable. After all, in philosophy as elsewhere we can only deal with problem-issues one at a time. And only a committed Pythagorean, who views the philosophy of mathematics as simply the philosophy of nature in another form, can take a contrary line here. Another threat to processism that worries Decock is the neoPythagoreanism that has recently been making headway among physicists. Now if physical processes could be expunged from nature in favor of an exclusive resort to abstract mathematical structures, this would indeed put a spanner in the works for process philosophy. But the idea that this sort of thing can occur does not ultimately look all that promising. After all, even dynamic processes admit of fixed descriptions. A good painter can use a stable picture to portray a raging sea; a good writer can convey dynamic events in stable prose; a clever mathematician can indicate drastic change via stable equations. And insofar as those mathematical relationships state laws of nature they cannot just be formal relationships as such. They have to hold for and of something and it is difficult to see how this something can avoid meriting the characterization of nature’s processes. I simply do not see the strict neo-Pythagoreanism contemplated by Decock as “a viable philosophical position” that represents a “serious competition to process philosophy.” There certainly are mathematical processes, and pure mathematics can and should have a suitable place in process philosophy and doubtless even in process ontology in its widest sense. But it does not (in my view) threaten to monopolize let alone replace process metaphysics. Decock writes: The complete description of a reality of processes is thus described by means of mathematical structures that are independent of temporal change. Even if reality is not static process philosophers must dislike the fact that the conceptual framework used to describe it does remain static. I myself do not find a reason for concern here. Surely the process philosopher, like any other, can invoke the distinction between a reality and the machinery of its descriptive representation. And representations need not share the features of the represented. Neither need objects of discussion resembling the mechanisms of their description nor conversely. Words need not shiver to describe shivering nor equations wobble to describe wobbling. Even as a stable, inertly fixed vocabulary can describe

294 an unstable world so can a motionless, inertly stable mathematics describe a motion-filled universe. What is there to dislike? And so, I just do not see the strong neo-Pythagoreanism that concerns Decock as a true option. We nowadays no longer subscribe to the Greek fetish of the original Pythagoreans that like must come from like and that therefore the mathematical terms of reference of our description of nature betoken a mathematical ontology in the composition of nature. In sum, while I agree entirely with Decock that “process philosophers cannot ignore the philosophical status of mathematics”— even as they cannot and should not ignore the philosophy of language or of logic—nevertheless such inquiries into the machinery of thought need not reshape our philosophy of nature, seeing that thought need not reflect the character of its objects: a stable mathematics can depict an unstable process even as a sober vocabulary can describe an inebriated individual. As regards Decock’s asking how I think mathematics should be incorporated into process philosophy, I can again only reply: One step at a time. For the process philosopher faces many challenges: the cognitive challenge of explaining the processes by which the human mind conceives of mathematical objects and facts at the psychological level and the analytical challenge of explaining how mathematical processes themselves work at the conceptual level. No doubt a vast amount of work remains to be done on both sides of the problem. But it would be premature to abandon hope here and say that the challenge of accommodating either aspect of mathematics presents an insurmountable obstacle to process philosophy. To be sure, while stable accounts can indeed present the truth about reality, their very finitude precludes them from ever achieving completeness. Correctness and completeness are very different factors: truth is one thing and the whole truth another—and something that lies outside our grasp. We can improve our accounts of the real but never perfect them—in that sense the world’s complex dynamism outruns the limited resources of finite beings. But this is a fundamental reality that no recourse to mathematics—however sophisticated—could possibly overcome. Even as all our analogies are invariably incomplete and imperfect, so are all of our models of the real—mathematical models included. All the same, there is one important point that I want to stress, namely that it lies in the nature of understanding that certain temporal cognitive processes (of learning, discovery, realizing, attending, etc.) can make possible encounters with fixed, nonprocessual facts. And here the

295 permanence of truth and fact is not confined to the realm of timeless truth (á la “2 + 2 = 4”) but also obtains for time-specific truth (á la “There were dogs in France in the 20th century”). Decock quotes with approval Quine’s dictum “Irrefrangibility, thy name is mathematics.” But it would be more appropriate to say that “Irrefragability thy name is fact.” For the process philosopher coming to terms with mathematics is no more difficult (and no more easy) than coming to terms with facts at large which, by their very nature as such, can lay claim to the aspect of stability. 3. Seibt on Particulars The dialectic of Johanna Seibt’s concerns center on the distinction between abstract universals and concrete particulars, and specifically between types of processes (such as rainstorms) and tokens of processes (such as this very rainstorm currently deluging Oxfordshire), both of which must figure in every reasonable account of process metaphysics. And her principal critique of my position is that I accept the idea of a “particularism” that admits processes as concrete particular individuals—a view she contrasts with a “general process theory” based on the idea of dispensing with particularity in relation to processes. Seibt accordingly objects to my retaining “the particularism of the substance paradigm” inherent in “the principle that all and only individuals are particulars.” Seibt’s critique attributes to me an acceptance of the theses (1) that all individuals are particulars (2) that all particulars are individuals Now as to (1) I would only subscribe to the idea that all concrete individuals are particulars. For I see little informative point to characterizing abstract individuals or types (rather than tokens)—for example, numbers, numerals, words, punctuation marks—as being particulars. And as to (2), I simply reject it, since there are particular sets or groups or collectivities which, as such, are just not individuals. I see little reason to characterize disunified and diffused particulars (the manifold of copies of the Declaration of Independence or the current membership of the American Medical Association) as being individuals rather than simply collections thereof. This idea of diffused individuals— which is characteristic of the mereological approach taken by Leonard and Goodman in the mid-20th century—is something I myself have never espoused or advocated. Accordingly, since I accept neither of those two theses, I do not feel particularly affected by Seibt’s complaint.

296 But I suspect that what actually worries Seibt is really something else, namely that I see processes as having both types and tokens—as coming both as generally instantiable (“a Nor’ eastern storm,” “the disintegration of a californium atom”) and as specific instance (“this Nor’eastern storm, “this disintegration of a californium atom”). For some reason she seems to think that concretizing a process to a specific realization in space and time is disloyal to process philosophy. For Seibt, real processes have to be generic and type like: concrete processual tokens need not apply. Thus regarding my particularismtolerant view of process she complains: They [processes] are said [by Rescher] to both be instances and to have instantiations . . . in short to be both tokens and types at once. What puzzles me here is that perfectly superfluous “at once” with its transfiguration of an either-or not a both-and. For I quite explicitly hold that process talk can either be with an indefinite article (a sunrise) with a definite article (the sunrise of this morning) with the latter concretizing (particularizing, exemplifying, instantiating) the former. As I see it, a concrete process is at once both a certain particular and an instantiation of its generic type. Of course, to say this is hardly to say that it is “both token and type at once.” The idea that there is anything that pulls off the neat trick of being “both like and type at one” is certainly far from my mind and (I would hope) also far from my pen. A duly identified process is either specific or generic, but certainly not both at once—though of course in instantiating something generic one must descend to the level of specificity. Let me now move on to Seibt’s characterization of her own position: We [must] leave the traditional idiom behind and characterize them [viz. processes] as neither types nor tokens in the classic understanding of these terms . . . [For one should] maintain that processes are both types and tokens. So it is clearly Seibt and not I who insists on that puzzling, and as I see it, deeply problematic “at once.” But I simply do not understand the category scheme at work here. The idea that there are processes (trips across America) that constitute types which in turn admit of tokens, is something I can grasp. But the idea that processes are both types and tokens—indeed that anything is both a type and a token—gives me difficulty. It is not the idea of process that

297 troubles me here, but that of is/are. And my bafflement is not helped by Seibt’s abstention from giving examples of the sort of processes she has in mind. (Her invocation of Hegel in this connection strikes me as shedding darkness rather than light.2) So as I see it, Seibt’s discussion is open to the complaint that Wittgenstein offers somewhere against theories that suffer from malnutrition caused by an insufficiency of examples. I am genuinely puzzled by Seibt’s contention that “the core intuition of the substance paradigm . . . [is] the principle that all and only individuals are particulars.” For, as I see it, individuation—the process of identifying individuals—figures in the context of the one-many distinction that is basic to counting while particularity figures in that of the type-token distinction that is basic to distinguishing the abstract from the concrete. Now as far as I can see no substantialist ever denied that there can be single types—that a letter of the alphabet (say) which admits many tokens is nevertheless a single abstract individual (qua letter). And processists, it seems to me, are not caught up in a dialectic relating individuals and particulars, but rather are arguing about the kinds of items—viz. perduring substances or transitory processes—that must be invoked to give a satisfactory account of reality. Moving on from particularity, Seibt turns to identification. Here she takes the line that a particular process entity (her Alpha) requires an “ontological factor which constitutes (explains) [its] unity and identity.” I find her discussion of this matter obscure and for that reason puzzling. Take a (particular specific) process—the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, say or (somewhat more simply) the unfolding of Admiral Yamamoto’s life and career. What sort of “ontological factor” is operative in accounting for unity and identity here? That of course depends on the nature of the process at issue. A military operation has one sort of unity (via the developmental stages of its unfolding in terms of a connected sequence of indivisible subprocesses involved in its planning, preparation, execution), a human life has a different sort of unity (in terms of the processes cited in its origination, growth, development, activities, etc.) Processual identity and unity is not generic, abstract, and “ontological” but endlessly diversified in line with the taxonomic variability of the processes at issue. THAT a particular process must have an identity and unity is conceivably an ontological matter (though more plausibly a conceptual one that is 2

As Goethe acutely asked Eckermann on Wednesday March 28, 1827: “What must the English and French think of the language of our philosophers, when we Germans do not understand them ourselves.”

298 predicated on the idea of particularity). But HOW that unity and identity is achieved is not something that hinges on anything so abstract as an “ontological factor”—but is a matter of the case-specific ground rules that govern the specific sort of case at issue—it is something that is rather taxonomic than ontological in its nature. Seibt seems to think that such a contextualistic view of process identity is an obstacle to processual change, relying on (my own) example: The dry acorn that is lying of the pavement now is the same [acorn] as the wet acorn that was lying there this morning, having withstood both rain and sunshine the day before. Her objection is that “Without adopting a ‘block universe’ . . . the relational expression ‘the same as’ must be taken [by processists who hold my view of the processual identity of material objects] to denote a relation of inclusion (or overlap) rather than identity.” This objection too puzzles me. If (as per my reading of the processist position) the acorn at issue is what that acorn does—that is, finds its identity in the complex process that constitutes its history—then the perdurance of this item throughout change is assured by the fact that different subprocesses of the same macroprocess are at issue. The fact that a different acorn would be at issue if its history were different does not of itself constrain a view that “things have to be as they are,” that is, does not engender some sort of causal determinism. It does no more than engender the conceptual point that if things were different, they would be different things—that “everything is what it is and not another thing.” The point is that one can unproblematically say both that the acorn persists throughout an actual change as the particular acorn it is and that if its history underwent a hypothetical change—say one that involves spatial discontinuities—then it would no longer be the same acorn that is at issue. And there is nothing about this second contention that constrains the causal determinism that would be required for “block universe.” 4. Shields on Universals INTRODUCTION. In his interesting discussion George W. Shields focuses on the problem of universals and its associated issue of the necessary and eternal truths that inhere in their interrelationships. But since we humans and our works are inextricably enmeshed in the trammels of time, how can we get from here to there? My inclination is to say that we manage it by way of suppositions and hypotheses that abstract from the real and project our thought into the

299 realm of the merely possible. Our minds, that is to say, enable us to operate with concepts that lead beyond the reality of things and look to relationships from which all reference to temporality and its works are put aside. This poses large issues, and, in particular, that of— MATHEMATICAL PLATONISM. Shields complains, I think justly, that Process Metaphysics does not take enough notice of mathematical Platonism. And he rightly wonders how I can reconcile the eternality of mathematical truth with the obviously temporal development of mathematics itself. So, how should one address the issue of the timeless, eternal verity of mathematical facts? As I see it this calls for exploiting an analogy with the medieval distinction between necessitas consequentiae and necessitas consequentis, the former being represented by N(p → q) and the latter by p → Nq. The former necessity is merely conditional, the latter, consequent necessity is absolute (albeit only subject to a condition). Thus when Tp abbreviate “p is timelessly, eternally true.” We must correspondingly differentiate between T(p → q) and p → Tq. On this bases, the timeless, eternal variety of mathematical facts is always conditional, a manner of T-veritas conseqentiae, and not absolute in the manner of T-veritas consequentis. Strictly speaking, one can and should say “It is a timeless, eternal truth that whenever a figure is a Euclidean triangle then the sum of its internal angles is 180°” rather than “Whenever a figure is a Euclidean triangle, then the sum of its internal angles is eternally and timelessly 180°”). The difference looks trivial but is in fact massive. Those mathematical conditionals maintain timeless and eternal truths about conceptual relationships rather than deploying particular conditions to establish categorically timeless and eternal truths. Here too hypotheses and supposition are once more the key. On this basis, the way in which I would propose to deal with Platonism in mathematics is not to abolish it, but to restrict its scope to conditional relationships. Thus, for example, once we adopt (say) the definition of human as rational animal, then by conceptual necessity “Humans are rational.” But this conceptually consequent hypothetical necessitation does not conflict with processuality of any sort—neither with the historical and contingent processual emergence of the concepts at issue, nor yet with the historical and contingent emergence of humans as such. This, in essence, returns to Bertrand Russell’s position of seeing mathematical necessity in the light of conditionalized if-then truth, albeit in the manner of conditionalization of consequence with that of consequent.

300 And so, rather than taking a stance that rejects the Platonic idea of (mathematical) universals as “timelessly eternal, abstract entities” I would propose to subject such a contention to a Carnap-reminiscent “rational reconstruction” that renders it compatible with historicity. For the timeless necessity of a conditional is clearly comparable with the historicity of the antecedent. It can be harmlessly correct to say “Necessarily (timelessly, eternally), Whenever condition C1 is satisfied, then condition C2 obtains. even though it does not follow, and one should not assert: “Whenever condition C1 is satisfied, then (timelessly, eternally) condition C2 obtains.”

necessity

NEW KINDS AND NEW POSSIBILITIES. When we turn from mathematical to natural necessity, process enters prominently on the scene. And this leads to Shields problem of how laws and possibilities can come to be if they have not been there right along. Consider a contingent process developing towards an open future, one of the sort that can be instantiated by the following branching-time micro-world: •

1.1

Y • 1.1.1 Y

Y •1

Y • 1.1.2 Y

Y • 1.1.3

• 1.2 Y • 1.2.1 Y • 1.2.2 And now let the truth-status of the propositions p and q be such that (1) p is always true at every node, whereas q is false at nodes 1 and 1.2.1 but true everywhere else. It is now clear. 1. that p is inevitably true, by holding at all nodes invariably. 2. that q becomes unendingly true at node 1.1: it holds then and at all subsequent nodes. 3. that q is contingent at nodes 1 and 1.2: it may or may not continue holding once that point is reached. 4. that p → q becomes inevitably true at node 1.1 but is contingent at node 1 and continues so at 1.2. Clearly new universal and (subsequently) omnitemporal developments emerge in the course of natural history in such a

301 microworld. And it is not difficult to see how such a developmental view of laws and thing-kind relationships can be projected into a more eventful macroworld. With this sort of thing in mind, I see no reason for queasiness regarding the Peircean view that “genuinely new laws and kinds of processes can emerge with the creative advance of actuality.” And so, of course, would new possibilities—such as the possibility of q’s ongoing inevitably which fails at node 1 but becomes very real at node 1.1. To some the very idea of new possibilities will be paradoxical. “How,” they will ask “can something that was not possible before now turn out to be possible?” The rub here is that with such temporal issues the possibility at stake is of course not LOGICAL possibility (i.e., freedom from contradiction) but rather the REAL (or “natural”) possibility of transpiring under the aegis of the then-operative natural laws. This possibility is not ABSOLUTE but rather HYPOTHETICAL, conditioned upon the realization of appropriate prerequisites. (Thus it is not possible for your descendants to run for the presidency before they reach the age of 35—let alone before they exist.) If one takes a Leibnizian view of the matter, such possibilities might figure timelessly in the intellect of God, but they would not “exist” in any sense of the term. (To figure in thought is not, of course, to exist or subsist somehow: the IDEA of a cat is not a cat—of any species whatsoever.) ETERNAL OBJECTS. This naturally leads to Shield’s concern about my reaction to Whitehead’s doctrine of eternal objects. As he insists, “for Whitehead, these prime possibilities are ontologically there, are eternally present in God’s primordial nature, whether God is consciously aware of them or not.” This view is radically different from Leibniz’s position that the manifold of possibility is ontologically there, alright, but only as the product of the conceptualizing actuality of God’s mind. My own inclination would be to de-theologize this particular aspect of ontology and to conceive of the manifold of possibility as spanned by the materials that possibly realizable finite minds can possibly conceive. On the one hand, this detaches the issue from what sorts of minds actually exist in nature and what those actual minds are actually doing. On the other hand, it does not go so far as to invoke the services of an a- or extranatural agency. This view of the matter indeed provides for a “doctrine of eternal objects,” since detaching the issue from the actualities of the historical process that characterizes nature and its works takes a conceptual step beyond the confines of space and time. On the other hand, it honors the

302 medieval precept non in philosophia recurrere est ad deum. Thus this approach still enables us to have it both ways, so to speak. It renders those eternal objects impervious to contingent developments within the order of actual occurrence. But nevertheless it renders them in considerable measure accessible to minds subject to the inescapable limitations of the actually real. THE TOPOLOGY OF POSSIBILITY. Shields touches upon some interesting speculations and conjectures about the magnitude and structure of the domain of possibility. In principle it must of course be as vast as anything can be. But as long as the linguistic mechanisms by which we are able to operate here are recursively developed and the “we” of the intelligences at work here are innumberable in number (however large), the part of this inconceivably vast manifold that we can effectively envision is bound to be of denumerable magnitude itself. Insofar as conceivability is a sort of first-order possibility, the range of the proximately possible is but a drop in the bucket—a miniscule sampling of a potential vastness. Accordingly, we have to be careful in our claims regarding the enormous manifold of fact: in relation to the vastness of possibility our modesty should have no bounds. (It is difficult enough to envision the actuality that is reserved for the future.) The lineaments of the possible no doubt elude the grasp of our imperfect measures. “There was a door to which I found no Key/There was a Veil past which I could not see,” so Omar Kayyam. And Leibniz was also right. Only the mind of an infinite intelligence could compass the manifold of the possible. Finally, I agree entirely with Shields’ reservations about “the notion of absolute or highest infinity to which the notion of a closed and complete domain of eternal objects or possibles seems to be committed.” At this stage we seem to me to be caught up in a logically constrained dilemma, which in the interests of coherence, forces a choice between the creatively sufficient self-engenderment of such a domain and its comprehensive totality. To unfold coherently it must leave something out and to achieve comprehensiveness it must fit everything in. Adequacy is in principle unrealizable here. The best that can be done is to take the processual stance of an ongoing movement towards ever-increasing adequacy that nevertheless leaves comprehensive completeness unachieved—of movement towards a goal that is never attainable in full. But there are murky depths that will have to be plumbed on some other occasion.

303 5. Gunter on Philosophy of Nature Peter A. Y. Gunter’s essay managed to frustrate me a bit. For he entitles his essay “Rescher’s Philosophy of Nature” and purports to address it via a chapter of that title in Process Metaphysics. In fact, however, he deals principally with one brief (3 _ page) section which does not deal with my own philosophy of nature at all (unlike my year 2000 Oxford University Press book on Nature and Understanding) but merely sketches the line taken by some process philosophers regarding matters of evolution, broadly construed. As Gunter sees it, there is a tension between a Darwinian insistence on pure chance as the driving force of evolution and the sort of progressive or developmental tropism advocated by some processists. But two points should be made here. One is that the biological is not the only version of evolution, since there is also cosmic and cultural evolution, both of which are a fertile ground for the growth of novelty, innovation, and complexity that has always intrigued processists. In a world that is increasingly complex—not necessarily in extent but in its modus operandi—the door is never closed to novelty and innovation. And the second point is that even in the merely biological realm there is room for ongoing innovation under the aegis of Darwinian principles. Accordingly, C. S. Peirce never tired of emphasizing nature's inherent tendency to complexity proliferation, writing: Evolution means nothing but growth in the widest sense of that word. Reproduction, of course, is merely one of the incidents of growth. And what is growth? Not mere increase. Spencer says it is the passage from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous—or, if we prefer English to Spencerese—diversification. That is certainly an important factor of it. Spencer further says that it is a passage from the unorganized to the organized; but that part of the definition is so obscure that I will leave it aside for present. But think what an astonishing idea this of diversification is! Is there such thing in nature as increase of variety? Were things simpler, was variety less in the original nebula from which the solar system is supposed to have grown than it is now when the land and the sea swarms with animal and vegetable forms with their

304 intricate anatomies and still more wonderful economies? It would seem as if there were an increase in variety, would it not?3 A tropism to biological novelty and complexity can be articulated even on Darwinian principles, without recourse to Bergsonian speculations. The salient point is that a developmental nisus can in theory operate either via the a fronte pull of a telos or via the a tergo push of processual principles. For example, a computer program generating a string of digits can tend either to randomness or to order without this condition somehow operating as an attractor.4 The development at issue in such contexts need not be telically ascribed to the frontal pull of some futuristic finality. Instead it can, quite unproblematically, be driven on by a causal impetus from behind. In this regard, processists can take comfort in Professor Gunter’s distinctly favorable observations about the impetus to complexity. The long and short of it is that the idea of a developmental tropism towards a problematic telos is by no means inherent in the nisus to complexity and novelty that is worked through in the version of evolutionism that I contemplate. Yet it is surely not my task as a philosopher to show “how ‘chance’ can turn the passivity of life in the Darwinian scheme into an active cornucopia of self-creation.” After all, there is no shortage of theorists who are willing and eager to do the job. Moving outside the biological realm we see further that the developmental aspect of novelty and innovation is particularly prominent in the case of natural kinds and natural laws. In the first nanosecond of cosmic evolution there is room only for laws of physics—laws of chemistry come later on. And laws of biology—let alone of sociology or macroeconomics—emerge still later. Gunter complains that I shortchange my readers in failing to give a detailed account of the ways in which evolution—biological, cognitive, and scientific—can be considered to qualify as progressive in tendency. And if all that I had to say on the subject were the brief discussion in Process Metaphysics, I could understand and even sympathize with this

3

Charles S. Peirce, Collected Papers, Vol. I (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1931), sect. 1.174.

4

An interesting instance of the emergence of higher-level principles of merely efficient causality is afforded in Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic books, 1984). And think here also of the development of snow flakes or of fractal patterns.

305 complaint. But the fact of it is that these are issues to which I have devoted a small shelf full of books.5 In the latter parts of his discussion Professor Gunter turns from biology to look more broadly at the issue of scientific progress—in particular raising the question of realism and the issue of a theorytranscended reality “out there.” Perhaps the processists best bet here is to argue that while we realize that we have to be prepared to revise any and every thesis of “hard” science—so that none of its present day theories will survive unscathed to the year 5,000—nevertheless this is not the case with the grosser materials of schoolbook science. (Atoms of some description will be with us from here on in.) It is the very looseness of claims about atoms and molecules that renders the existence of such things secure. If the existence of something is subject to the formula “to be is to be (exactly) as we nowadays deem it to be”—then its existence would stand on very shaky ground indeed. This approach puts us in the fortunate position of being able to hold that the objects discussed in our scientific theories have a life independent of those theories and do not stand or fall by their correctness. The great advantage of a realism of schoolbook science is that it disconnects the issue of the existence of “theoretical entities” from the tenability of our particular theories, making it possible for such entities to have a life independent of our current beliefs about them. It makes it possible to say (surely rightly!) that we need not maintain the definitive truth of any of the current formal theories of natural science in order to maintain that science provides us with substantial information about the workings of nature at the level of observables and unobservables alike. What we obtain on this basis is not a full-blown “scientific realism” that claims the entities discussed in technical theoretical science exactly as this science describes them. It does not maintain that we can read off the way the world is from the statements endorsed by natural science as it stands. Rather, it is a realism that is indebted to science but does not involve reifying the theoretical entities of science in just the way currently envisioned by natural science. It is a realism that becomes available not in but through natural science as we have it, not a scientific realism, but a

5

Methodological Pragmatism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977), Cognitive Economy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986), Scientific Realism (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1987), A Useful Inheritance (Totowa, NJ.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1990), Complexity (New Brunswick, NJ.: Transaction Publishers, 1998), and Nature and Understanding (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000).

306 science-indebted realism. Such a view of schoolbook science affords a physical realism that is neither merely a common sense realism nor a strictly scientific realism, but represents something of a halfway house. It is a softer scientific realism that draws on technical science not for its details but for the rough essentials. It leaves us very much with a half-full barrel. It puts us well ahead of a barebones metaphysical realism that merely maintains that there is a mind-independent reality, but it is unable to provide detailed descriptive information about this reality. For on the basis of schoolbook science, we can know a good deal about nature—and can come to know ever more about it as inquiry proceeds. All the same, what we learn at this level of “schoolbook science” is vague, imprecise, and general, rather than specific, exact, and accurate. It is gravely deficient in informativeness, giving us a picture of reality seen “through a glass, darkly” without the precision and detail of a scientifically exact idea that we would dearly love to have. I have stressed above the differences between correctness and completeness. But this holds only at the local level of particular facts. At the global level of knowledge at large—or of science if you prefer—we have no alternative but to presume incorrectness whenever there is incompleteness. Against this background it emerges that a realism based on schoolbook science is an attractive position because it is able to reconcile two facts—that on the one hand, we cannot claim that natural science as it stands characterizes reality correctly, but nevertheless that on the other hand, we cannot simply dismiss it as uninformative about “the way the world is”. In the choice between a naive scientific realism and a sceptical scientific fallibilism, recourse to schoolbook science affords us a middle way, enabling us to acknowledge the ambivalence of our attitude towards the deliverances of current science.6 6. Atmanspacher and Martin on Persons While the deliberations of Harald Atmanspacher and Jack Martin convey a number of interesting observations and suggestions, their principal point is that the processual approach to personhood that I have taken lacks “a full appreciation of the sociocultural, relational constitution of persons and requires a more explicit inclusion of sociocultural contexts in the constitution of a person.” All I can do here is deny that such a neglect of 6

The position that is sketched here is developed at greater length in the author’s Scientific Realism (Dordrecht: D Reidel, 1987).

307 sociocultural context occurs in my writings while at the same time acknowledging that if it did so, this would indeed be a serious defect. Consider the following passage from p. 110 of Process Metaphysics: For processists this processual unity of the person has a distinctly social aspect. As it sees the matter, the self-definitional activity of persons proceeds in the context of interaction with one another. The processual dispositions that define a person as the individual he or she is preeminently include those dispositions that characterize the person as part of a social order of communicative interrelationships. As G.H. Mead stressed the community-formative role of the communications of organisms is such that it is effectively impossible to study them sensibly in isolation, abstracting from the social context that shapes virtually the whole spectrum of their activities. Surely these are not the words of someone who downgrades the sociocultural aspect? The fundamental point as I see it is this: Every process— be it physical or biological, meteorological or agricultural, personal or social, theoretical or practical—exists in a larger context of further processes. No process is isolated and self-sufficient unto itself: every process has subprocesses that form parts of it and macroprocesses of which it itself forms a part. And this is certainly so of persons as well who live and breathe and have their being in an interrelated web of further processes—social, cultural, economic, political, etc. The socio-cultural processes that constitute the processual environment of a person are unquestionably formative factors in making that individual into what he is. (It does not take merely a village to bring an individual to a viable state of personal maturation but an entire society.) Not only does a processist have no vested interest in denying any of this, but on the contrary, it is a crucial facet of his overall position. Atmanspacher and Martin pivot their interesting discussion of time in relation to process on the causal asymmetry of physical processes—their lack of time reversal invariance. But from the angle of a philosophical anthropology of person processes, this seems to be only a small part of the story. Admittedly, a human life considered as an individual item lacks reversibility: life comes only once to a customer and must be lived forward in time from infancy to dotage. But from a social perspective, the life of a type-reproductive species exhibits fundamental stages—the cycle of birth, youth, infancy, maturity, decay, and death repeats itself generation after generation. To be sure, contextual innovation superimposes itself on this repetitive process in the lives of individuals. But it is the characteristic

308 mixture of the two—repetition and variation on its detail that is in part subject to our control—that renders the modus operandi of our species effectively unique on the earth’s biological scene. This leads to the theme of creativity and innovation. Atmanspacher and Martin write that “transiency is also a major and mandatory requirement for anything like emergent novelty or creative work, fundamental cornerstones of process philosophy.” But this is surely quite wrong. Innovation is not necessarily available only at the expense of what has gone before: novelty and creativity can in principle engender the new without supplementing the old even as a garden can exhibit the old species alongside the new. Innovations can always be superadded to the old. The world’s concrete individual microprocesses are temporally finite, but this need not be so for the larger typological macroprocess that they constitute which can in principle go on indefinitely—this drop of water can evaporate but once, and yet the evaporation of water can in theory go on ad indefinitum. In particular, this is so where dialectical processes are involved which are not merely cyclic but spiral upwards and onwards. And here it is not necessary for the new to form at the expense of the old (as per the historical development of a city) because when spatial limitations are not involved (as with the development of ideas and concepts) innovation can in theory proceed ever onward in the manner of an accumulating snowball. And local stability need not be an obstacle to global innovation. We continue to admire the plays of Shakespeare and the statues of Michelangelo without impeding the overall development of drama and sculpture. Creative innovation is ultimately not simply a matter of the origination of new objects but of new types of objects. And in fact it is the typological—and thus abstract—rather than the concretely existential aspect of ontology that is pivotal here. And concrete reality can never quite capture this issue here, since concrete individuals can only exemplify and illustrate a type but never completely encapsulate it. For with types, the aspect of potentiality always outruns the range of the concrete since the processual aspect of the issue always embodies the possibility of further realizations. Now because types are by nature potentially reinstantiable and because it is types that are crucial for innovation, the transciency insisted upon by Atmanspacher and Martin seems to me to be problematic. To be sure, the origination of a type can, by definition, happen but once, yet once it is there this item of creative novelty is not itself something that is necessarily transitory. Shakespeare's Hamlet was a creative innovation, but

309 it can be given an ongoing life through performative re-creation. And while such an individual concrete process once, gone, is gone forever, nevertheless the processual type it instantiates can be kept alive. And while it is new but once, its novelty is a feature which, in principle, can be appreciated forever. No single performance ever constitutes a play. Finally, I must also reject the charge of endorsing a “pernicious dualism that privileges physical, chemical and biological levels over the socio-cultural level.” I see the very idea of privileging as problematic here. For as a coherentist, I think of different regions that lie interrelatedly on the same plane rather than of tiers of hierarchies that inevitably elevate some items above others. It is a fundamental principle of epistemology that the answers you get will depend on the questions you ask. Now if the questions you ask lie in the order of causal explanation, then you will indeed be well advised to look to physics, chemistry, and biology. But if the questions you ask lie in the hermeneutical order of understanding and elucidation, then you had best resort to ideas, concepts, and other such socio-cultural constructions. And here neither domain is privileged over the other tout court—neither issues of natural causality nor issues of conceptual elucidation. Both are legitimate, significant, and interesting in their own way and neither predominates nor replaces the other. It is all a matter of the questions you ask and the issues you have in view. No doubt the idea of a hierarchy of subordinated systems of reality—some basic and others emergent from or supervenient upon them—has both its uses and its adherents. But as I see it, this whole model operates on the side of causal rather than hermeneutical issues. Here the crux is not subordination but coordination, and no level can be dealt with adequately from a vantage point located wholly within another. The conceptual/hermeneutic order has a life of its own: if you persist in trying to get there from a causal vantage point (and I refrain from saying naturalistic because there is nothing unnatural about concepts) you simply cannot get there from here. (Nor—as Hume already said—can you effect a transfer in the opposite direction and arrive at causal relations on the basis of “ideas.”) 7. Riche on Process Logic and Epistemology The essay by J. Riche positions some of the logico-epistemological ideas discussed in my book with regard to processist aspects of the pursuit of truth within the wider setting of recent work in formal and empirical science and in the philosophy of science. In considering how the idea of

310 process functions in these areas, Riche seeks to elaborate and substantiate the lines of thought set out in my discussion. He does a fine job in sketching out various recent developments along these lines, which could, in fact, also be instantiated in ways that neither of us have as yet discussed—simulation and dynamic modelling, for example, or the theory of heuristics ad formalized inquiry. As one looks over the landscape of recent development in such a wide array of fields, one becomes aware of what must, in retrospect, be seen with a wisdom of hindsight as a crucial thematic difference between the science studies of the late 19th century and those of a hundred years further on. The science theorists of the second half of the 19th century were concerned with product. They sought to describe, inventory, systematize and categorize the findings of science with respect to the modus operandi of nature. Accordingly, the classification of the sciences was a project to which they attributed much importance. However, this venture ultimately issued in a collapse. In the 11th (1911) edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, physics is described as a discipline composed of 9 constituent branches (e.g., “Acoustics” or “Electricity and Magnetism”) which were themselves partitioned into 20 further specialties (e.g., “Thermo-electricity: of “Celestial Mechanics”). The 15th (1974) version of the Britannica divides physics into 12 branches whose subfields are—seemingly—too numerous for listing. (However the 14th 1960’s edition carried a special article entitled “Physics, Articles on” which surveyed more than 130 special topics in the field.) When the National Science Foundation launched its inventory of physical specialties with the National Register of Scientific and Technical Personnel in 1954, it divided physics into 12 areas with 90 specialties. By 1970 these figures had increased to 16 and 210, respectively. And the process continues unabated to the point where people are increasingly reluctant to embark on this classifying project at all. Substantially the same story can be told for every field of science. The emergence of new disciplines, branches, and specialties is manifest everywhere. And as though to negate this tendency and maintain unity, one finds an ongoing evolution of interdisciplinary syntheses—physical chemistry, astrophysics, biochemistry, etc. The very attempt to counteract fragmentation produces new fragments. Indeed, the phenomenology of this

311 domain is nowadays so complex that some writers urge that the idea of a “natural taxonomy of science” must be abandoned altogether.7 The expansion of the scientific literature is in fact such that the natural sciences have in recent years been disintegrating before our very eyes. An ever larger number of ever more refined specialties has made it ever more difficult for experts in a given branch of science to achieve a thorough understanding about what is ever going on in the specialty next door. Few areas of scientific study of the development of science itself are more graphic in illustrating the processual nature of science. But all of them illustrate more or less clearly the untenability and inappropriateness of “a static and substantialist view of truth and knowledge.” To be sure, it goes without saying that the pursuit and development of their inquiries by scientific investigators is a matter of process. But the key fact of it—as Riche joins me in emphasizing—lies in the further consideration that the products of modern science are all heavily infused with the conception of process. For both in the formal sciences like mathematics and physics and in the empirical sciences that deal with nature and/or human artifice the processual nature of the relevant phenomena are salient features of the phenomenological landscape. I am grateful to Riche for the care and erudition he has devoted to illustrating and substantiating such a point of view. 8. Andersen on Science in Historical Perspective While I am pleased that Hanne Andersen finds merit in the process-geared view of science that I have espoused, I am a bit dismayed to note that she seems unaware (or at any rate takes no notice) of the books in which this position is worked out in detail: Scientific Progress (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976), The Limits of Science (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984; 2nd ed. 2000), Scientific Realism (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1987), and Inquiry Dynamics (New Brunswick NJ: Transaction, 2000). The first part of Andersen’s discussion relates to what she characterizes as “the processual view” of science. Apart from some points of emphasis, we seem to be in substantial agreement on most issues here— with one very significant exception. Andersen seems to think that my view

7

See John Dupré, The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).

312 of the scientific process is based on induction from the history of science and that it rests on an endeavor “to draw inferences from the fate of previous science to the fate of current science.” But this is not the case since my position is instead based on a structural analysis of the way in which an empirical science of physical nature must in principle rely on the use of technology for the acquisition of ongoing sophisticated data. While the historical situation no doubt exemplifies this process, it does not constitute it. However, the main bone that Andersen wants to pick with the sort of processism that I favor relates to the interactive dialectic of processes and natural kinds. On this processual view (as sketched in Process Metaphysics), kinds are so constituted that—as Andersen succinctly puts it— “what links the various instances of a kind is their functioning . . [so that] instances to a kind are similar in what they do . . . [and] the integrity of kind breaks down to a unity of process.” Now Andersen sees this view as decidedly unfair to what she calls a “developmental view” of thingkinds. She writes as follows: Accordingly to Rescher, one should adopt the processual point of view because the instances of kinds are similar in what they do. On that view the integrity of kinds boils down to a unity of processes. On the developmental view, on the other hand, the question whether kinds are constituted by similarities (whether based on actions, as Rescher insists, or on properties in general), or whether it is the kinds that give rise to the similarities, was seen to vanish. What this representation of the matter fails to come to terms with, however, is that two entirely different questions are at issue in the two accounts of thing-kinds, namely: • What are natural thing-kinds? How are such kinds constituted? • How do people at a particular place and time come to adopt the particular taxonomy of natural kinds with which they operate? The first question is basically conceptual and relates to the ontological issue of what it is to be a natural thing-kind. The second question is substantially historical and relates to the “history of ideas” question of how people have come by the schedules of natural kinds that they make use of. The contrast is that between the questions “What X’s are” and “What sorts of things are (at one time or another) taken to be X’s.” Decidedly different matters are at issue here. No doubt both sorts of questions are meaningful and potentially interesting. But neither abolishes or abrogates or replaces the other.

313 The two questions come to anything like the same thing only when we ourselves are the people at issue. For we have no choice but to answer a question of the former sort in propria persona on our own account. And here the only issue is what we think to be correct; what others do or have thought is essentially irrelevant. So Andersen’s fixing on that “developmental view” does not mend matters. The fact that people’s view of natural kinds has a history (along with everything else) and that those of other times and places thought of that matter differently does not address the question of the comparative ontological primacy of substance and process. For the answer here does not turn on historical issues of what has been thought but only on the substantive issue of what we ourselves are to think on the matter. Recourse to what Andersen calls the developmental view does not resolve the problem but simply changes the subject. 9. Cobb on Theology John B. Cobb Jr. and I are at one in seeing religion and philosophy as cooperative partners participating in the overall project of achieving understanding and guidance for the conduct of life in a complex world. Neither, to be sure, can do the work of the other. Religion does not settle the questions of philosophy (let alone questions of natural science). Nor can philosophy possibly succeed in providing for what Kant called a “religion within the limits of reason alone” in any really meaningful sense of that term (“religion”).” In particular, the theology of a revealed religion like Christianity must transcend the reach of strictly philosophical considerations. But nevertheless, philosophical reflection can and should illuminate the deliberations of theology even as it should help to illuminate and enliven our understanding of scientific or political or social issues. For philosophy’s commitment to clarity and cogency of thought is in order throughout. In particular, process philosophy is able to bring grist to the mill of Christian theologizing at three levels. First, at the level of the individual, there is the fact that faith does not consist in a subscription to propositions; it is not a matter of signing on the dotted line, so to speak, to certain creedal propositions. Rather, its heart and core consists in living a certain sort of life (with thought-life not excluded). Second, the level of community there is the fact that “the church” is not artifact—a building whose construction is completed at a certain place and time—but a complex social institution that is ever renewed as it propels itself down the corridor of time amidst ever-changing conditions and circumstances.

314 Thirdly—and specifically with the Christian conception of God—there is the never-ending commercium between an eternal deity and its revelatory interaction with the community of the faithful through the on-going labors of the third person of the Trinity. At all of these levels—individual, communal, and divine—the nature of the Christian faith involves and perhaps even demands an interactive reciprocity that is best understood in processist terms. And, as Cobb wisely insists, the reciprocity at work here is something to which the Christian theologian cannot do justice by ascribing efficacy and responsibility to one party alone, be it man or God. (Neither is God man’s figment nor is man God’s puppet.) Of course there are going to be conceptual difficulties here. How, for example, can God work in the world and yet not be of it? Such questions bring grist to the mill of the theologian and the philosopher of religion. Their elucidation is a challenge. But there is nothing inherently intractable about them. (Laws of nature, after all, are in something of the same boat.) Even in relatively recent times Whitehead, Hartshorne, and other processists afford us ample philosophical materials for instructive deliberation here. The principal disagreement between Cobb and myself relates to the issue of processual atomicity in nature. Cobb endorses the Whiteheadian view that the decomposition of processes into subordinate subprocesses must at some stage terminate in nondecomposable atomic process. I (among others) see no reason of general principle why this process of process decomposition should not continue ad indefinitum. To be sure, a possible compromise position suggests itself here based on the distinction between absolute and sortal atomicity. If processes are arranged at different levels of descriptive complexity, then it is possible that we will have regress-terminating atomicity at any given process-type level, while nevertheless the shift to another level of consideration would allow reduction to further subordinate subprocesses functioning at yet another further and deeper level. Thus, conscious process might reach an end in atomistically indecomposable conscious acts which themselves, however, admit of subconscious disaggregation. Or again, life-processes admit of organically atomic processes which themselves nevertheless consist of subordinate pre-organic (electrochemical) processes. In this way a doctrine of sui generis atomicity could be combined with one of a potentially unending processualism that dispenses with an atomicity of process. But this is only intended as an irenic suggestion for “splitting the difference” between the friends and foes

315 of processual atomism while accommodating the basic insights of both positions. Whitehead apparently thought—along lines that are somewhat obscure (at least to me)—that genuine novelty requires atomicity—that originality must come in discrete jumps, in patentable units, so to speak. But this looks to be an aspect of the specifically human condition that need surely not be projected into the metaphysics of reality at large. Moreover, there is surely no reason of general principle for precluding the prospect of innovation and novelty proceeding in a manner that is phenomenologically continuous even if ontologically discrete. (Think of motion pictures here.) And in any case, if one adopts a theory of process levels, there is always the prospect that new and novel levels of complexity (if not of structure then of processist operation) can emerge from preceding ones.8 Another salient issue of potential disagreement between Cobb and myself relates to the nature and status of the deity. Is God a substance, a person, a spirit, or some combination of all or none of the above. The main point here seems to me to be that however we characterize or classify the deity, God is unique. If a substance, he is a substance totally different in kind from all others, and if a person, likewise so, and so on. No matter how categorized, God is bound to be an exception to all the usual rules. And this fact takes much of the bite out of the classificatory exercise. For classifiers associate items into groups and God resists all efforts at thingkind simulation in differing fundamentally for the others of whatever group one may consider, be it intelligences, agents, or whatever. However—and this is crucial—no matter how we conceive of him, God can and should be seen as an agent involved in an extensive commerce with the world and its creatures. And in the end, it is this fact of interactive engagement that renders it at once useful and natural to approach our deliberations about God from a process-philosophical angle. Admittedly, to whatever extent we account for God as exception to the rules, the idea of a commercium of reciprocal understanding becomes more difficult. But this difficulty will lie on our side and not on that of a God who is bound by no limits save those of logic. As the theologians of the Christian tradition have generally insisted, our understanding of God’s ways must proceed through analogues and metaphors. And so, there is in the final analysis no cogently conclusive reason to refrain from seeing our relation to God as an affinity and solidarity based on imperfect 8

On this prospect see the author’s Complexity (New Bruswick: Transaction Books, 1998).

316 comprehension. Affection does not require a parity of status. (Reflect here on the idea that people may well have no friend and adherent more loyal and loving than their dog.)9 10. Weekes on Process Philosophy In these comments I have sometimes complained that my critics have not read enough of my work and have focused their critique on too small a context. With Anderson Weekes the situation is the diametrical opposite of this, and I am deeply appreciative of his concerted effort to keep the bigger picture in view. His treatment of my views is so wide-ranging as to qualify it not just as a critique but as a constructively synoptic introduction to my metaphysical position. The deep worry that (rightly and plausibly) pervades Weekes’ critique of my view of process philosophy is the question of “whether Rescher’s approach to process philosophy really does justice to this [existentially and experientially] ontological priority of process, especially as it is disclosed by such unowned processes as time.” Bergson deemed it a treason to process to spatialize time, and Weekes—so it seems to me— deems it an analogous treason to conceptualize time, and sees me as an arch-traitor in this light. Weekes’ principal complaint against my processism is that my approach to process philosophy “leaves behind the more daring ideas of Bergson, James, and Whitehead, all of whom envisioned the primordial reality of process in a radical ontology of becoming.” As Weekes sees it, I have “assimilated the revolutionary ideas [of these processists] to something lesser and less threatening” by insisting on the conceptualistic turn from reality itself to our cognitive operations in conceptualizing it, thereby replacing an ontologically existential processism by an epistemologically conceptualistic one. I think that Weekes’ explanation of my position is right on target so that my oft-reiterated reaction elsewhere of having been misunderstood would be entirely out of order. How then would I respond to Weekes’ complaint? 9

This essay is a revised version of a response to some comments by Professor John R. Cobb Jr. on the author’s book in Process Metaphysics (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996) at an (unpublished) exchange at a Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association.

317 In effect I would want to argue that reality often blurs the edges of our theoretical contrasts. Weekes’ instrument of critique is the linguistic contrast between the existential/ontological aspect of process and its conceptual/epistemic aspect. But insofar as truth and knowledge are a matter of adaequatio ad rem—of a coordination of thought and reality— we cannot prize these two aspects of the matter apart into a neat separation. I propose to do so by taking a leaf from the book of classical pragmatism. The classical pragmatist from Peirce to Dewey strove to soften up the rough edges of distinction insisting that reality generally intermediates between the seemingly sharp dichotomies inherent in our concepts. And so where Weekes wants to impale me on sharp edge of a distinction between an ontological and a conceptual approach, I would want to insist that these two cannot be separated but must be combined and coordinated. For we have no way to get to what is via the doorway of what we think it to be. “Tell me what is the case in such-and-such a matter but do this quite separately and apart from what you think about the matter” is an instruction that is in principle unfulfillable. We simply cannot get at the ontology of things save by means of the conceptual thought machinery at our disposal for its characterization. Of course reality transcends our conceptualizations of it. But insofar as we can come to grips with any reality-characterizing fact we must and cannot but come to grips with it via our own conceptualization of the matter. The existential (ontological) and epistemological (conceptual) aspects of an issue—whatever it be, existence included—cannot be effectively separated. Where the concept of some item is concerned, object and concept are fused together. Coordination and coherence are unavoidable here. The key point—so it seems to me—is that man as homo sapiens is a conceptualizing being, one whose experience is largely articulated in linguistic and thus conceptual terms. If it is indeed the case that (as I believe) to be is to be in principle experientiable with experience broadly construed to encompass conceptual experience then the ontological issue of existence cannot be surgically separated from the epistemic issue of conceptualization. Experience is the linkage which makes the two into a unified whole so that one cannot here justly complain of a conceptualizing abandonment of ontology (or of what Ortega y Gasset called ontophobia). Whenever existential claims are warranted, both object and concept have to come into it. Both are needed. But which comes first? What of the issue of priority? My response is simply: At this point there is no

318 functional priority but only coordination! Diagrammatically its situation may be represented as follows: Processes ontology

epistemology process conceptions

In the order of becoming (of ontology and causality) processes doubtless have priority vis-à-vis over our conceptualizations of them. But in the order of understanding (of epistemology and hermeneutics) our process concepts are in the driver’s seat. And an adequate philosophical account requires a suitable coordination here, a “closing of the circle” that dispenses with functional primacy or priority and reflects the sort of systemic coherence that any adequate philosophy demands. Here as elsewhere, a category egalitarianism of systemic interdependence reigns: there is systemic coordination alright, but no hierarchical order of precedence. So on this perspective, we have it that in the order of being and existence, the ontology of process does indeed enjoy priority. But in the larger scheme of things that takes the synoptic view characteristic of philosophical inquiry, matters stand otherwise and the issue is not one of precedence but one of conjunction. And on just this perspective I would deny the charge that I “seem to have removed the crucial significance of transcendental feeling from ontological processism.” Agreed, from the existential perspective at issue with feeling, a prioritization of process is entirely in order. But when we turn from feeling to understanding—to explanation and interpretation—the issues of conceptualization will and must come to the forefront. And both of these perspectives have to figure coordinatively in the larger picture. Just this, so it seems to me, meets the challenge of Weekes’ complaint that a conceptualistic approach to process philosophy does not do justice to the affective aspect of the feeling of processual change as a factor in human experience—a view he sees as a sign of backsliding into the outdated way of ideas that was prominence in the 16th and 17th centuries. But here too I would incline to resist the insistence on a dichotomous either-or. The status of process has to be seen a triangular

319 way: ontologically processes are the furniture of the real, ideationally the concept of process is an indispensable instrumentality of description and explanation, and experientially (as for example, when I blink my eye) we are bound to have, conjointly!, both the processual object in the observed world—the blink—and the experientially subjective experience of blinking). Such processes in which one is oneself involved, be it by way of observation or production (or both), actually serve as the very paradigms of process, and it seems plausible to say that if we humans had not experienced, process the concept of process as inherently of description and explanation might well have occurred to us. The experiential role of process must clearly play a key role in process philosophy, and I frankly cannot see how anything I have said on the subject could invite—let alone constitute—a denial of this undeniable fact. And so, in sum, when Weekes confronts me with the elegantly worded question: “Whether the fluidity of experience is to be understood as a transcendental precondition of any attempt to know what is, or is in itself an instance or epiphany of what is?” I would—Weekes’ surmise to the contrary notwithstanding—refuse to opt for that first alternative but would, instead, insist on having it both ways. (I am, after all, not just a processist but a coherentist as well—a process-coherentist, in sum.) 11. Poli on Process Semantics The brief Appendix to Process Metaphysics observes that modern quantificational logic in its classical formation is based on an object/property semantics and outlines an alternative process/feature semantics that manages to avoid various difficulties encountered by the classical approach. In reacting to this discussion, Roberto Poli makes the following successive points: (1) that one of these difficulties (relating to nonexistent entities) can also be averted by a shift from classical quantificational logic to one of the so-called free logics. (2) that the particular process semantics I suggest, which describes processes adverbially and concretizes them “spatially” (that is, by reciprocal concurrent interrelationships) also encounters the problem of nonexistents in a form that I claim process semantics averts. (3) that process semantics can also be developed along the lines of the transition kinematics that has come into vogue in computer science.

320 This discussion occupies the first three pages of Poli’s typescript. The substantial remainder of the paper is devoted to elaborating his view that (as his Conclusion puts it) “some of the basic issues of process semantics require ideas and tools arising from advanced contemporary mathematics.” He then in closing returns briefly to my discussion with the observation: (4) that he (Poli) is “unable to share the analytic belief (apparently shared by Rescher) that logic is the conceptually most and philosophically most fundamental tool.” I shall address these four points in an order modified for expository convenience. Point 1 This otherwise well-taken point is entirely irrelevant to the dialectic of the discussion. The attribution of a certain advantage to process semantics vis-à-vis classical semantics is totally independent of the consideration that one or another of these advantages is also possessed by one or another nonclassical system. (Only if it were argued—as nobody yet has—that every asset of process semantics also belongs to some other specific and particular alternative would this sort of point cut any ice.) Point 4 Surely no one would question that logic is a versatile and useful tool. But that it is philosophically the most fundamental is a view of the Russell-Wittgenstein tradition that I myself have never endorsed nor advocated. Philosophy after all is sufficiently many-sided and complex for any one instrumentality to be fundamental to it. The very concept of fundamentality here is something that a coherentist like myself is bound to view with deep skepticism. I cannot begin to fathom where Poli got this idea. Moreover, I regard it as particularly strange that Poli thinks that my treatment of process thought neglects the key role of mathematics. I wish he had read not just the Appendix but the book itself. There he would have encountered the following passage on page 92: The fact is that neither the logic of object and predicate nor even the grammar of subject and verb prevail in the language of nature. Rather, it is the mathematical language of differential equations that best represents its language of process. In this regard as in so many others, Leibniz had insight far beyond his time. Important though verbalized language may be (and he stressed that it is very important), it is nevertheless the mathematical language of process—of transformation functions and differential equations—that is essential for

321 representing the world’s physical realities. This is a fact of which process philosophers have not made as much as they ought, although it is something of which Whitehead, himself a first-rate mathematician, was keenly aware. Point 3 The relevance of contemporary mathematics on process philosophy seems to me to be a programmatically promising idea and it would be very interesting to see it set out in greater detail. There is much of good logic in joining Poli in thinking that the formalized treatment of processes in matters of computation theory and practice will prove at the least suggestive and perhaps even conceptually paradigmatic for the process perspective in language and philosophy. My only quarrel with Poli in this regard is that he seems to think this line of thought to be at odds with what I say in Process Metaphysics. I cannot find a single line in the book that would lead credence to such a view. Point 2 Poli argues that thinking of concrete process as identified and individuated via the “special” realization of processual kinds vitiates my claim that process semantics can come to terms with issues of nonexistence. I must confess that the difficulty here escapes me, seeing that the idea of a process characterization that fails to find spatial instantiation/realization seems to be both natural and unproblematic in relation to nonexistents. *** All in all, then, my view of Poli’s paper is as follows: He has a definite agenda in view—an approach to process theory grounded in modern mathematics in general and computation issues in particular. This much I find both suggestive and interesting. At the same time, he seems to think that the deliberations of my process book constitute an impediment or discouragement to the research program he has in view. And this strange idea is something I find altogether baffling.

GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY Rescher, Nicholas, Complexity: A Philosophical Overview, New Brunswick NJ., Transaction Publishers, 1998. Rescher, Nicholas, Inquiry Dynamics, New Brunswick, N.J., Transaction Publishers, 2000. [ID] Rescher, Nicholas, Nature and Understanding. The Metaphysics and Method of Science, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2000. [NU] Rescher, Nicholas, Process Metaphysics. An Introduction to Process Philosophy, Albany (N.Y.), State University of New York Press, 1996. [PM] Rescher, Nicholas, Process Philosophy. A Survey of Basic Issues, Pittsburgh (Pa.), University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000. [PP] Rescher, Nicholas, Conceptual Idealism, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1973. Rescher, Nicholas, Cognitive Pragmatism, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001. Rescher, Nicholas, Empirical Inquiry, Totowa, Rowman and Littlefield, 1982. Rescher, Nicholas, Induction. An essay on the justification of inductive reasoning , Pitsburgh, University of Pitsburgh Press, 1980. Rescher, Nicholas, The Primacy of Practice. Essays Towards a Pragmatically Kantian Theory of Empirical Knowledge, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1973. Rescher, Nicholas, Paradoxes. Their Roots, Range, and Resolution, Chicago and La Salle, Open Court, 2002. Rescher, Nicholas, Philosophical Standardism. An Empiricist Approach to Philosophical Methodology, Pittsburgh, University of Pitsburgh Press, 1994. Rescher, Nicholas, Realistic Pragmatism , Albany (N.Y.), State University of New York Press, 2000. Rescher, Nicholas, Scepticism. A Critical Reappraisal, Totowa, Rowman and Littlefield, 1980). Rescher, Nicholas, A System of Pragmatic Idealism. Three Volumes, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1992-1994). Rescher, Nicholas, Satisfying Reason. Studies in the Theory of Knowledge, Dordrecht/Boston/London, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995. Rescher, Nicholas, A Theory of Possibility , Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975. Rescher, Nicholas, Topics in Philosophical Logic, Dordrecht, D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1968.

INDEX NOMINUM Albertazzi, L. Alexander, S. Amann, A. Anaximander Andersen, H. Andersen, P. B. Aristotle

287 46 171 184 23-24 35 197sq. 311-312 171 21 23 29 46 55-56 72 80 82-84 114-115 163 180-181 183-184 189 195 247-248 259-262 275 291 Arnold, C. H. 44 Aspect, A. 97 Atmanspacher, H. 19 35 161sq. 306-309 Atten, M. van 96 108 111 Avenarius, R. 50 Axelrod, R. 304 Bachman, K. F. 250 Bacon, F. 53 158 Baltag, A. 31 Bambrough, R. 204 208 Barker, P. 197 203 208 Barret, R. 31 Barwise, J. 183 195 Batens, D. 19 31 Bateson, G. 52 Bell, J. 279-280 287 Bell, J. S. 97 Belnap, N. 119 134 Benjamin, W. 42 Benthem, J. van 285 287 Berdyaev, N. 46 Bergson, H. 27-29 31 36 45 46 49 50 52 82 110 139 141 148 149-150 160 223 225 234 240 241-242 244 246-247 249-251 253-256 258 262-263 265 304 316 Berkeley, G. 84 89 186 195 Bertalanffy, L. von 51 Bether, M. J. 154 Bhaskar, R. 168 171 Bishop, R. 171 Blanden, R. V. 156 Boniface, J. 14-15 31

326 Borges, J.-L. Boutroux, É. Boyes-Braem, P. Bradley, F. H. Brakel, J. van Brandom, R. Brennan, J. G. Brentano, F. Broad, C. D. Brorson, S. Brouwer, L. E. J. Brown, D. Brown, H. Bruno, G. Buchwald, J. Burgess, J. Campbell, D. T. Capek, M. Carnot, N. L. S. Carrette, J. R. Carrier, M. Carroll, J. B. Caterus, J. Cavaillès, J. Chapman, M. Chen, X. Christian, W. A. Christiansen, P. V. Churchland, P. M. Clarke, S. Clarke, W. N. Clausius, R. Cobb, C. W. Cobb, J. B. Jr. Cocchiarella, N. Code, M. Coleridge, S. T. Collingwood, R. G. Columbus Cooper, R. Copernicus, N. Cornford, F. M. Couturat, L. Crabbé, M. Cusa, N. of Cuvier, G. L. Dalen, D. van

73 46 209 28 251 258 96 106 111 87 92 182195 45 28 37 246 259 265 287 45 132 191 197 14 107-108 110 111 183 195 288 44 201-202 208 53-54 73 203 205-206 208 105 110 49 45 49-51 54 266 208 193 260-261 106 209 203 205 208 45 171 194 63 45 54 222 24-25 36 44-45 142 145 211sq. 292 313-316 285 287 182 195 189 45 54 75 54 280 71 45 33 71 54 288

327 Dalton, J. Daly, H. E. Darwin, C. Decock, L. Deleuze, G. Democritus Derrida, J. Descartes, R. Devaux, P. Dewey, J. Dilthey, W. Dirac, P. Dixon, R.A. Duhem, P. Dumoncel, J.-C. Duns Scotus Dupré, J. Einstein, A. Emerson, R. W. Emmeche, C., Emmett, D. M. Engel, M. Epicurus Etchemendy, J. Faraday, M. Fechner, G. T. Feynman, R. Fichte, I. H. Field, H. Finnemann, N. O. Fisch, M. H. Ford, L. S. Foucault, M. Fouillée, A. Frege, G. Fulda, H. F. Gabbay, D. Gaeta, L. Galileo, G. Galin, D. Gelder, T. van Geldsetzer, L. Gerbrandy, J. Gibson, R. Gilson, É. Gœthe, J. W. von Goodman, N.

59 36 222 18 49 52-54 73 89-90 139 147sq. 232 303-304 13-14 35 45 95sq. 291-295 45 46 53 59 226-228 46 53 58 63 64 71 84 89 190 252-253 259-262 265 45 46 79 82 86 88 90 92 242 317 86 88 92 251 289 102 105 110 209 199 208 58 46 106 110 311 15 19 51 73 90 99 101 105 106 71 169 171 45 52 59 183 195 62 46 98 100-101 110 250 106 110 171 45 45 46 66 75 142-143 145 46 50 31 62 106 268 77 92 31 63 184 185 272 283 51 285 288 77 92 29 31 31 58 66 289 297 105 110 295

328 Gould, S. J. 151 Grassmann, H. 180 Gray, W. D. 209 Grice, P. 20 31 Griffin, D. R. 36 44 45 75 93 111 195 222 266 Groeneveld, W. 29 31 Guattari, F. 53 Gunderson, K. 209 Gunter, P. A. Y. 18 36 103 110 147sq. 303-306 Gupta, A. 119 134 Gustafson, K. 164 171 Haack, S. 16 31 Hacking, I. 24 31 Hadot, P. 84 92 Hamilton, W. R. 188-189 195 Hampe, M. 12-13 36 77sq. 289 290-291 Hankins, T. L. 189 195 Harel, D. 285 287 Harper, W. R. 44 Harré, R. 168 170 171 Hartmann, N. 169 171 286 Hartshorne, C. S. 38 44 46 47 58 103 110 138 140-143 145 149 217-220 286 314 Haslanger, S. 124 134 Hawley, K. 123 134 Hegel, G. W. F. 12 46 71 78 79 82-83 88 114 118 138 231 250-253 265-266 297 Heidegger, M. 46 78 79 92 241-242 246 251 252 255 265 Heijenoort, J. van 31 Heinemann, G. 84 Helmoltz, H. von 50 Hendricks, V. 29 31 Henrich, D. 78 92 Henry, G. 103 109 110 Heraclitus 15-16 46 47 57 79 84 85 127 131 289 Herbart, J. F. 250 Hesse, M. 199 208 Hilbert, D. 14-15 31 98 Hintikka, J. 28 31 Hobbes, T. 158 Hocking, W. E. 45 Hogemann, F. 265 Hooper, S. E. 45 Hope-Mason, J. 54 Horsten, L. 96 Hoyniningen-Huene, P.202-204 206 208 Hume, D. 46 54 63 65 83 84 89 218 258 309 Hüntelmann, R. 33 134 Husserl, E. 37 54 111 179 234 246-248 261 266 286

329 Jacquette, D. Jaeschke, W. James, R. E. Jr., James, W.

31 265 44 27 38 46 47 50 58 64 65 69 71 78-80 82 86 87 90 92 165-166 171 223 225 232 233-234 241-244 246 247 249 252-259 262 265-266 316 Johnson, A. H. 45 55 Johnson, D. M. 209 Johnson, M. 189 191-192 195 Jonas, H. 45 Jones, J. A., 75 Joyce, J. 53 Jung, C. G. 71 Kamp, H. 22 177 195 Kant, I. 14 18 26 47 49-52 54 65 67 78-80 83 92 108-109 110 149 159 188-189 231 237 241 243 250-252 255 313 323 Keller, E. F. 156 Kierkegaard, S. 251 252 265 Kline, G. L. 45 66 Koestler, A. 156 Koppe, S. 171 Koyré, A. 52 54 73 Kozen, D. 285 287 Kraemer, F. 91 Kraus, O. 265 Kripke, S. 142 183 195 271 Kronz, F. 169 171 Kuhn, T. S. 35 58 59 115 198 203 205 206 208 Kukla, A. 202 208 Ladrière, J. 11 31 33 45 187 195 Lakatos, I. 106 110 Lakoff, G. 205 208 Lamarck, J.-B. de Monet de 51 54 90 153 156 Langer, S. K. 45 Lango, J. W. 75 Laudan, L. 199 209 Lawrence, N. M. 45 Leclerc, I. 45 Leibniz, G. W. von 37 46 53 57 58 63 64 82-84 92 98 104 113 121 126 184 191 277 283 289 301-302 320 Leucippus 59 Lewis, D. 123 134 Leyton, M. 286 287 Lindley, R. A. 156 Linnaeus, C. von 106 Lloyd, B. B. 209 Locke, J. 84 89 Loomer, B. M. 44

330 Lorenz, K. Z. 57 Lotter, M.-S. 91 Lovejoy, A. 253 265 Lowe, V. A. 45 Lucas, G. R. Jr. 51 Mach, E. 46 50 256 Macnamana, J. 286 287 Maddy, P. 104 110 Mahler, G. 171 Malthus, T. H. 54 Marcus Aurelius Antonius 85 92 Marion, J.-L. 58 Markov, A. A. 164 Martin, J. 19-20 37 161sq. 306-309 Martin, R. 183 195 Marx, K. 46 Marx, L. 287 Masuch, M. 285 287 Matilal, B. K. 245 265 Maxwell, J. C. 62 63 90 Mays, W. 45 McKenna, J. 96 McKlintock, B. 156 McTaggart, J. M. E. 176 Meland, B. E. 44 Menger, K. 179 Merleau-Ponty, J. 191 Merleau-Ponty, M. 45 46 241 Mervis, C. B. 203 209 Meyerson, É. 45 Miklosich, F. X. von 246 Milius, S. 155 Milne, E. A. 173 189-192 195 Milton, R. 152 Minkowski, H. A. 15 98 Misra, B. 164 171 Moore, G. E. 27-29 31 Moss, L. S. 29 31 Müller, M. 252 Müller-Herold, U. 171 Muskens, R. 285 287 Nagarjuna, 245 Newton, I. 19 22 54 80 81 98 106 173-174 182 183-188 193 195 Nicolin, F. 250 266 Niemann, H.-J. 159 Nietzsche, F. W. 46 71 86-88 92 247 251 289 Nivens, P. A. 33

331 Nobo, J. L. North, J. D. Northrop, F. S. C. Oberheim, E. Ockham, W. of Ogden, S. M. Paci, E. Palter, R. M. Pannenberg, W. Pape, H. Parfit, D. Parmenides Passmore, J. Peano, G. Peirce, C. S. Pepper, S. C. Piaget, J. Planck, M. Plato Plotinus Pöggeler, O. Poincaré, H. Poli, R. Polos, L. Popkin, R. H. Pöppel, E. Popper, K. R. Port, R. Pouivet, R. Priest, G. Prigogine, I. Primas, H. Prior, A. Psillos, S. Putnam, H. Pythagoras Quine, W. V. O.

66 191 45 202 208 63 260 44 45 45 45 91 169 171 54 58 226 77 92 106 12 16-17 24 31 37 46 50 58 61 79 82 86-87 90 139-144 286 301 303 304 317 138 286 50-51 73 14 16 57-58 64 68 82 84 85 87 105 109 136-137 139 140-141 145 159 240-241 249 292 299-300 46 250 266 50 71 106 29-30 37 267sq. 319-321 285 287 78 92 165 171 49 50 285 288 25 31 195 45 55 99 101 110 164 171 163 171 176-177 199 209 87 92 169 171 198 209 95-96 100-105 109 293-295 13 15 18 24 31 32 35-36 45 50 73 77 88-89 92 102 103 105 106 110111 169 171 268 270 290 291 295 85 92 46 44 50-51 175-176 195 46

Rabbow, P. Reese, W. L. Reeves, G. Reichenbach, H. Renouvier, C. Rescher, N., passim Reyes, G. 286 287

332 Reyle, U. Ribot, T. Riche, J. Rickert, H. Rodrigo, P. Rosch, E. Rosen, G. Rubinstein, E. Ruhnau, E Russell, B.

177 195 50 21-22 38 173sq. 309-311 250 266 58 203 209 105 110 133 134 171 26 -28 32 45 62 63 64 70 71 106 174 177 178-179 191 195 240 268 269 271 299 320 Salmon, W. 291 Sandkühler, H. J. 92 Sankey, H. 198 208-209 Santayana, G. 141-142 Sapir, E. 193 Sartre, J.-P. 19 241 Schelling, F. W. J. von 12 46 250-251 255 266 Schiller, F. C. S. 50 Schlipp, P. A. 49 Schopenhauer, A. 251 Schrödinger, E. C. 105 Seibt, J. 15-16 33 38 113sq. 197 295-298 Sellars, W. 77 88-89 92 114 132 134 290-291 Sestoft, C. 197 Shakespeare 308 Shapiro, R. 154 Shaw, J. B. 180 195 Sheldon, W. H. 47 79 149 Sherburne, D. W. 75 93 111 195 266 Shields, G. W. 16-17 38 75 135sq. 298-302 Shuster, G. N. 195 Sider, T. 124 134 Simmel, G. 86 289 Smith, A. 54 Smith, B. 134 Smith, N. K. 110 Sober, E. 152 Spencer, H. 49-50 54 251 252 303 Spinoza, B. 92 150 259 Stace, W. T. 42 Stebbing, L. S. 45 Steele, E. J. 155 156 Stegmaier, W. 88 92 114 134 Stengers, I. 55 101 110 Stjernfelt, F. 171 Stokes, W. E. s.j. 45

333 Strawson, P. 13 32 119 170 171 Suarez, F. 58 260 262 Sugarman, J. 169-170 171 Suzuki, N. 31 32 Swenson, D. F. 265 Sylvester, J. J. 174 Taine, H. 50 Tait, P. G. 62 Tarski, A. 182 271 286 Taylor, C. 170 171 Taylor, R. 57 Teilhard de Chardin, P. 46 52 153 Thompson, J. 170 171 Thomson, W. 62 Thorson, R. E. 195 Tiuryn, J. 285 287 Toffler, A. 55 110 Travis, J. 154 Trendelenburg, F. A. 46 250-251 266 291 Uexküll, J. J. von 51 Urban, W. M. 45 Urquhart, A. 285 288 Valenza, R. 103 109 110 Van Atten, M. 96 Van Brakel, J. 96 Van der Veken, J. 46 Vandenabeele, B. 96 Veltman, F. 22 31 Vendler, Z. 175 195 Verkuyl, H. 175 Visser, A. 285 287 Vuillemin, J. 45 Vygotski, L. 168 172 Wahl, J. 45 Wallace, B. A 51 Watanabe, S. 23-24 31 Weber, M. 11 33 38 41sq. 96 240 252 264 266 Weekes, A. 26-29 33 39 43 223sq. 316-319 Weinberg, J. R. 63 Weiss, P. 45 58 Weisse, C. H. 250 White, M. 87 92 Whitehead, A. N. passim. Whiteside, D. T. 195 Whitrow, J. 189 191 196 Whorf, B. L. 51 193 Wiehl, R. 33 45

334 Wieman, H. N. Wiener, N. Wiener, P. P. Williams, D. D. Wittgenstein, L. Wolfram, S. Woods, J. Wundt, M. Wusterhube, A. Zemach, E. Zeno

44 177-179 196 50 44 28 209 297 320 187 31 250 266 159 132 134 21-22 57 58 64 104 174 178 181-184 220

ANALYTIC TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents................................................................................7 Key to Abbreviations of N. Rescher Relevant Works .....................9 Preface, Paul Gochet (Liège) ...........................................................11 Acknowledgements...........................................................................33 List of Contributors..........................................................................35 Introduction. Process Metaphysics in Context, Michel Weber (Louvain-la-Neuve)...........................................................................41 Abstract.....................................................................................41 1. The Book ...............................................................................41 2. The Present Volume of Essays on PM ..................................42 3. Scholarly Boundaries............................................................43 4. Historicity of Process Thought .............................................46 5. Continuism and Contiguism..................................................58 References.................................................................................75 I. History of Process-Philosophy. Problems of Method and Doctrine, Michael Hampe (Zürich).................................................77 Abstract.....................................................................................77 1. Types of histories of philosophy............................................77 2. Philosophies..........................................................................80 3. The Edifying Language of Process .......................................84 4. Philosophy of Life .................................................................86 5. Science and Empiricism........................................................88 References.................................................................................92 II. The Taming of Change, Lieven Decock (Tilburg) ....................95 Abstract.....................................................................................95 1. Process Philosophy Vindicated by Modern Physics .............96 2. Neo-Pythagoreanism versus Process Philosophy ...............100 3. Process Philosophy and Mathematics ................................102

336 4. Ways Out.............................................................................105 5. Final Remarks.....................................................................109 References...............................................................................110 III. Process and Particulars, Johanna Seibt (Aarhus).................113 Abstract...................................................................................113 1. The Substance Paradigm ....................................................113 2. Rescher's Particularist Notion of Process...........................116 3. Persisting Problems of Persistence .....................................119 4. Non-Particular Processes and the Recurrence View of Persistence ..............................................................................125 5. Two Paths for Process Ontology.........................................127 6. Conclusion ..........................................................................132 References...............................................................................134 IV. Rescher on Process and Universals, George W. Shields (Kentucky State) .............................................................................135 Abstract...................................................................................135 1. Exposition of Rescher’s Position ........................................136 2. Some Questions...................................................................140 References...............................................................................145 V. Rescher’s Philosophy of Nature, Pete A. Y. Gunter (North Texas)...............................................................................................147 Abstract...................................................................................147 1. Nisus Versus the Blind Watchmaker ...................................148 2. Defining the Fittest .............................................................151 3. The Perfect Paradigm .........................................................153 4. Biological progress and philosophy of nature ....................157 References...............................................................................160 VI. Reflections on Process and Persons, Harald Atmanspacher (Freiburg) & Jack Martin (Simon Fraser)...................................161 Abstract...................................................................................161 1. Introduction ........................................................................161 2. Process and Time, Process and Innovation ........................163 3. From Transiency to Freedom .............................................165 4. A Person Is More than a Conscious Individual over Time .167 5. Tiered Ontology and Emergent Personhood.......................168 References...............................................................................171

337 VII. Process Logic and Epistemology, Jacques Riche (Leuven).173 Abstract...................................................................................173 1. Processes in Natural Language Semantics .........................175 2. Event Semantics ..................................................................176 3. Process in Mathematics ......................................................178 4. Indeterminacy and Logic ....................................................180 5. Time and Motion.................................................................183 6. Epistemology and Physics...................................................189 7. Conclusion: Unavoidable Subjectivity................................193 References...............................................................................195 VIII. Science: Process and History, Hanne Andersen (Copenhagen) ..................................................................................197 Abstract...................................................................................197 1. The Processual View...........................................................197 2. Categories and Kinds..........................................................203 3. Physical Parameters and the Role of Instruments ..............205 4. The priority of Kinds and Actions .......................................206 References...............................................................................208 IX. Process Theology, John B. Cobb, Jr. (Claremont) ................211 Abstract...................................................................................211 1. Rescher's Approach ............................................................211 2. The Issue of Omnipotence...................................................213 3. Divine Action ......................................................................216 4. God as Person.....................................................................216 5. Causal Relations .................................................................217 6. A Disagreement with Rescher .............................................219 References..............................................................................221 X. Process Philosophy: Via Idearum or Via Negativa?, Anderson Weekes (New York) ......................................................223 Abstract...................................................................................223 1. Introduction ........................................................................224 2. The Four Variants of Process Philosophy ..........................225 3. Rescher’s Transcendental Approach: The Conceptual Primacy of Process .................................................................231 4. The Reflexive Consistency and Meta-philosophical Coherence of Process Philosophy...........................................238 5. The Existential Approach: The Ontological Priority of Process....................................................................................245

338 6. The Epistemological Consequence of Ontological Priority: The Conceptual Priority of Process ........................................253 7. Conclusion ..........................................................................263 References...............................................................................265

XI (Appendix). Process Semantics, Roberto Poli (Trento) .........267 Abstract...................................................................................267 1. Introduction ........................................................................267 2. Nominalizations ..................................................................268 3. Adjectives and adverbs .......................................................270 4. Types of process semantics .................................................271 5. Dynamic families ................................................................273 6. Dynamical identities ...........................................................274 7. The main difference between state-transition systems and process systems ...................................................................276 8. The ontology of processes ...................................................276 9. The basic mathematical model............................................276 10. Formal and ontological theories.......................................278 11. Synthetic differential geometry .........................................279 12. Intuitionism .......................................................................280 13. Kinds of points ..................................................................281 14. Thick points are value-bearers .........................................283 15. Conclusion ........................................................................284 Replies, Nicholas Rescher (Pittsburgh).........................................289 1. Hampe on Process History .................................................289 2. Decock on Change ..............................................................291 3. Seibt on Particulars ............................................................295 4. Shields on Universals..........................................................298 5. Gunter on Philosophy of Nature .........................................303 6. Atmanspacher and Martin on Purpose ...............................306 7. Riche on Process Logic and Epistemology .........................309 8. Andersen on Science in Historical Perspective...................311 9. Cobb on Theology...............................................................313 10. Weekes on Process Philosophy .........................................316 11. Poli on Process Semantics ................................................319

339 General Bibliography.....................................................................323 Index Nominum ..............................................................................325 Analytic Table of Contents ............................................................335