#prehension

“The movement of the Tao consists in Returning. The use of the Tao consists in Softness. All things under heaven are born of the manifested. The manifested is born of the unmanifested.” – Laozi The Poet Lin Bu Wandering in the Moonlight by Du Jin, late 1400s Sometimes it’s best to use labels yourself before others can have an opportunity to apply them to you. It is for this reason that I’ve…

Tim Jackson and I discussed Hartshorne’s article, “Whitehead’s Revolutionary Concept of Prehension.” Charles Hartshorne offers a detailed and insightful examination of Alfred North Whitehead’s process-relational philosophy. Hartshorne, who served as Whitehead’s assistant at Harvard University during the 1920s, was also profoundly influenced by Charles Sanders Peirce, whose papers he edited…

Video timestamps are available on YouTube. Below is Claude 3 Opus’ summary of the transcript (with a few edits by me):  In this detailed conversation, Matt, a philosopher, and Tim, a biologist, delve into various philosophical topics related to perception, consciousness, and the nature of reality, with a particular focus on the ideas of Alfred North Whitehead. The discussion begins with an…

Nouvel article publié sur https://www.2tout2rien.fr/prehension-du-robot-a-tentacules-spaghettis/

La préhension délicate du robot à tentacules spaghettis [vidéo]

“Prehensions are the way that what is there becomes something here. A prehension is the bond between two actual occasions. The past occasion shares in the constitution of the new occasion…”

“Suppose you are listening to music. You hear the final chord of a musical phrase. But why do you hear it as the final chord of a musical phrase? Is it a matter of consciously recalling past experiences? Obviously not. Unless the earlier occasions of experience are functioning in the present, there would simply be a succession of disconnected sounds. The past experience flows into the present. It does not constitute the present occasion of experience totally, because there must be the addition of the final chord. But the past is alive in the present. Still, one experiences the presence of the previous chords as derived from experiences in the past, the very recent past. This is an example of the prehension of the past experience by the now becoming experience. What was past becomes present, but it is present as derived from that past.”

As a personal project I recently created a poster based on Whitehead’s concept of prehension. I used some copy form John Cobb’s Whitehead Word Book (above). A print-ready .pdf file can be downloaded here. Enjoy!

“The field of psychology, let alone psychoanalysis, is largely unaware of the magnitude of Whitehead’s contributions to philosophical psychology. But surprisingly, so is the field of philosophy. Unless you are a fervent Whiteheadian immersed in the minutia of process studies, Whitehead’s contributions to human psychology largely remain eclipsed by his other bodies of work that have left their mark in the fields of mathematics, logic, the philosophy of science, religion, education, and most notably, metaphysics. Having said this, one of the most under-emphasized aspects of Whitehead’s metaphysics is that it embodies an unconscious ontology. The fundamental activity that comprises and underlies the cosmology of actual entities is the eternal process of unconscious experience. The cosmos is alive insofar as it is active, constituted through a dynamic flux of microcosmic orderly events, much of which are non-conscious organizations as ‘drops of experience, complex and interdependent’ (PR, p. 18). Whitehead specifically refers to the realm of unconscious process as the basis for human consciousness, yet the broader treatment of unconscious occasions that underlie his metaphysical system remains only peripherally addressed. What is of greater significance is that his process reality is governed by unconscious forces which form the a priori foundation for all modes of human experience to manifest. Despite the fact that Whitehead did not articulate a formal theory of unconscious ontology, it is embedded in the most basic fabric of his philosophy.”

The above passage comes from a book by psychologist and philosopher, Jon Mills, titled Underworlds: Philosophies of the Unconscious from Psychoanalysis to Metaphysics. Great stuff!

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Painting above by Turkish artist, Iliad Sabchi

Joep Beving – Ab Ovo

Contemporary Dutch composer and pianist Joep Beving creates genuinely relaxing and contemplative neo-classical music with a broad and immediate appeal. Joep Bevin describes it as “simple music for complex emotions”. His album “Prehension” is out now.