09/27/01

"The art of reasoning consists in getting hold of the subject at the right end, of seizing on the general ideas which illuminate the whole, and of persistently marshalling all subsidiary facts round them. Nobody can be a good reasoner unless by constant practice he has realized the importance of getting hold of the big ideas and of hanging on to them like grim death." (Whitehead, A.N., The Aims of Education and Other Essays, NY: The Free Press, 1929.)

Data: The aspects from the past that are "appropriated" in the developing actual occasion, or occasion of experience. "The data appropriated are provided by the antecedent functioning of the universe." (MT, 151)

Prehension: The process of appropriation of data. David Ray Griffin uses the terms "physical prehension," the unionizing (becoming one) with another actual entity and "conceptual prehension," the unionizing with a possibility. (UWK, 128f)

Life: "absolute, individual self-enjoyment of a process of appropriation." (MT, 151) This implies a "certain immediate individuality, which is a complex process of appropriating into a unity of existence the many data presented as relevant by the physical processes of nature." (MT, 150). "...the characteristics of life are absolute self-enjoyment, creative activity, aim...the enjoyment belongs to the process and is not a characteristic of any static result. The aim is at the enjoyment belonging to the process." (MT, 152)

Occasions of experience are the aforementioned processes. The "collective unity" of "occasions of experience" compose the evolving universe and constitute the "really real things." (MT, pg. 151). According to ANW, "process for its intelligibility involves the notion of a creative activity" and "the process of eliciting into actual being factors in the universe which antecedently to that process exist only in the mode of unrealized potentialities. The process of self-creation is the transformation of the potential into the actual, and the fact of such transformation includes the immediacy of self-enjoyment." (MT, 151)

"Actuality is the self-enjoyment of importance. But this self-enjoyment has the character of the self-enjoyment of others melting into the enjoyment of the one self. The most explicit example of this is our realization of those other actualities, which we conceive as ourselves in our recent past, fusing their self-enjoyment with our immediate present. This is only the most vivid instance of the unity of the universe in each individual actuality." (MT, 118)

Doctrine of creative advance: The universe passes into a future by virtue of forming a "new unity of experience" via the creative fusion of "actualized data of the antecedent world" with "non-actualized potentialities," said fusion accompanied by an "immediacy of self-enjoyment." (MT, 151)

Aim: Prehensions have aim. That is, the aim is "at that complex of feelings which is the enjoyment of those data in that way. 'The way of enjoyment' is selected from the boundless wealth of alternatives." (MT, 152)

Sense perception: "The peculiarity of sense perception is its dual character, partly irrelevant to the body and partly referent to the body. In the case of sight, the irrelevance to the body is at its maximum...the visible presentation is dominant. In other modes of sensation, the body is more prominent. (MT, 153).

"Science can find no individual enjoyment in nature: Science can find no aim in nature: Science can find no creativity in nature; it finds mere rules of succession. These negations are true of natural science. They are inherent in its methodology. The reason for this blindness of physical science lies in the fact that such science only deals with half the evidence provided by human experience. It divides the seamless coat - or, to change to the metaphor into a happier form, it examines the coat, which is superficial, and neglects the body which is fundamental.

The disastrous separation of body and mind which has been fixed on European thought by Descartes is responsible for this blindness of science. In one sense the abstraction has been a happy one, in that it has allowed the simplest things to be considered first, for about ten generations."

Self: In Modes of Thought, Whitehead speaks of an "experiencing self." He goes on to say, "Some facts have such closeness of reference to the immediate self that an intimate unity with them is claimed. In the way, the concept of self-identical enduring personal existence dawns. It is the concept of one person with many stages of existence. But the basis of all experience is this immediate stage of experiencing, which is myself, now." (MT, 117)

Body: "The body is that portion of nature with which each moment of human experience [most] intimately cooperates. There is an inflow and outflow of factors between the bodily actuality and the human experience, so that each shares in the existence of the other. The human body provides our closest experience of the interplay of actualities in nature." (MT, 115)

"Nothing is more astonishing in the history of philosophic thought than the naive way in which our association with our human bodies is assumed. The unity of man and his body is taken for granted. Where does my body end and the external world begin? For example, my pen is external; my hand is part of my body; and my finger nails are part of my body. Also the breath as it passes in and out of my lungs from my mouth and throat fluctuates in its bodily relationship. Undoubtedly the body is vary vaguely distinguishable from external nature. It is in fact merely one among other natural objects.

And yet, the unity "body and mind" is the obvious complex which constitutes the one human being. Our bodily experience is the basis of existence. How is it to be characterized? In the first place, it is not primarily an experience of sense data , in the clear and distinct sense of that term...And yet our feeling of bodily unity is a primary experience. It is an experience so habitual and so completely a matter of course that we rarely mention it. No one ever says, 'Here am I, and I have brought my body with me'" (MT, 114), but they should if they wanted to be accurate.