A PROCESS ANALYSIS OF
QUALITY:
A.N. WHITEHEAD AND R.
PIRSIG ON EXISTENCE AND VALUE
By
Andrew Sneddon
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy,
Ottawa University
asneddon@uottawa.ca
A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
Master of Arts
in the Department of Philosophy
THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW BRUNSWICK
April, 1995
Abstract
This thesis is divided into two portions.
Part One is a sympathetic exploration of the philosophies of
Alfred North Whitehead and Robert Pirsig, with special
emphasis on theories of value. The basic outlines of the
Metaphysics of Process and the Metaphysics of Quality are
presented in the first two chapters respectively. The third
chapter is an examination of points of fundamental agreement
and difference between the two systems. Chapter IV consists
in the presentation of specific arguments criticizing
traditional philosophico-scientific thought.
Part Two (click
here) is this writer’s attempt at synthesizing a meaning
of ‘value/quality’ and a new value theory from the works of
Pirsig and Whitehead. The resultant system pays special
attention to the balancing of tension between intensity of
experience within individual value contexts and communal
diversity of content of experience. Aesthetics is treated as
an examination of the texture of individual experience; art
is seen as deepening the harmonies and contrasts within a
participant’s value context. Ethics concerns the relations
between contexts. Individuals are responsible firstly for
their own intensity of experience; ‘respect’ characterizes
inter-contextual relations. The thesis concludes with a
brief look at Constructive Postmodern Philosophy.
ACRONYM KEY
AI =
Adventures of Ideas
FR =
The Function of
Reason
MT =
Modes of Thought
PR = Process and Reality
RM = Religion in
the Making
SMW = Science and the Modern
World
SYM = Symbolism: Its Meaning and
Effect
ZMM =
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PART ONE
CHAPTER I: Alfred North Whitehead
Process and Reality...
…And Value
CHAPTER II:
Robert Pirsig
Reality=Value
CHAPTER III: Comparison and
Contrast of the Metaphysics of Process and the MOQ
1)
The Importance of Process
2)
Difference in Analysis of Notion of Final Cause
3)
Difference in Conception of Standards of Value
CHAPTER IV: Scientific Materialism,
Classic Formalism, SOM and Value
Whitehead
1) Top-Down Explanation
2) Re-Interpretation of Brute
Matter-of-Fact Involving Perception and Purpose
Pirsig
1) Reductio Ad Absurdum
2) Analysis of Moment of Perception
PART TWO
(Click here )
CHAPTER V: A Process Analysis of Quality
Aspect A: Repetition
Aspect B: Novelty
Aspect C: Definition
Aspect D: Contrast
Aspect E: Limitation
Aspect F: Final Causation
Aspect G: World Orientedness
CHAPTER VI: The Art of Life
Aesthetics
Ethics
EPILOGUE: Constructive Postmodern
Philosophy
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A Process Analysis of Quality:
A. N. Whitehead and R. Pirsig on
Existence and Value
INTRODUCTION
This is an attempt to provide a firm
foundation for the consideration of value issues. In a way,
it is a cosmological consideration of valuation: that is, I
am attempting to fit quality into an account of the way
things are. The synthetic value theory and analysis of
quality presented in Part Two are intended to be useful in
the examination of aesthetic and ethical issues. Alfred
North Whitehead and Robert Pirsig have also approached this
task, and I think their respective theories are mutually
supportive in essential details. In brief, Pirsig analyzes
the world in terms of Quality. Value is the ultimate
substratum of the macroscopic world for him, but he sees it
as an event or process, not a substance. Whitehead’s account
of process involving valuation at a fundamental level
provides a sound basis for Pirsig’s macroscopic evaluation.
The two aspects of this project--the
metaphysics, or the account of the way things are, and the
theory of value--are related to two different fields of
current research. A group of people who see themselves as
doing work in Constructive Postmodernism consider value
matters in a fashion similar to the one here worked out.
Since it is the details of this thesis that are of interest
with respect to these thinkers, I shall wait until the end
of the project to address them in detail (v. EPILOGUE). The
other type of research is being performed by cosmologists
and theoretical physicists, and consists in an attempt to
construe the world as fundamentally in process. Two thinkers
in particular, Ilya Prigogine and David Bohm, are worth
noting.
Ilya Prigogine won the 1977 Nobel Prize
for chemistry for his work on dissipative structures.
Although he has been influenced by Whitehead, he is first
and foremost a chemist with a lifelong interest in
introducing a sophisticated notion of time into science.
Prigogine writes about a world in process--change and
disorder are fundamental. The world is made up of systems
which are in contact with their environments. These systems
exchange energy with the environment. A stable system--one
that is not suffering dramatic change--is said to be at
equilibrium. Once upon a time, it was thought that
equilibrium was the rule and disorder the exception.
Prigogine thinks the reverse is true, and shows how change
actually produces order.
A system that is disrupted from its
history of order--due, perhaps, to some change in the
environment--moves from equilibrium to a state ‘far from
equilibrium. Equilibrium functions as an attractor state,
meaning systems move from one state of equilibrium to
another--systems far from equilibrium are caught up in the
process of the change. At a point far from equilibrium position, a
system is at a ‘bifurcation’ point--its future cannot be
predicted from what is known about its history. It can jump
to a new, higher (because more complex, and requiring more
energy) state of equilibrium, or it can drop to a condition
of less order, and hence less complex. In other words, the
choice for the system is one between order and chaos. The
ordered choice is the production of a dissipative
structure--the introduction to the science of thermodynamics
that won Prigogine the Nobel Prize.
A chemical clock is an easy-to-picture
example of the unexpected order that can arise from
increased disorder of a system. A chemical clock involves a
situation of cross-catalysis--two chemical reactions
mutually stimulate each other. That is, the product of one
chemical reaction participates in another chemical reaction,
and the product of the second reaction participates in the
first. To produce disorder in such a system, the
concentration of one element is increased. At a certain
point, a critical threshold is reached, and the
concentrations of the products, instead of remaining mixed
in a mutual equilibrium, oscillate at a specific period.
Prigogine, in Order Out of Chaos (1984, 147-148) describes the
phenomenon:
Suppose we have two
kinds of molecules ‘red’ and ‘blue’. Because of the chaotic
motion of the molecules, we would expect that at a given
moment we would have more red molecules, say, in the left
part of a vessel. Then a bit later more blue molecules would
appear, and so on. The vessel would appear to us as
‘violet’, with occasional irregular flashes of red or blue.
However, this is not what happens with a chemical clock;
here the system is all blue, then it abruptly changes its
color to red, then again to blue. Because all these changes
occur at regular time intervals, we have a coherent
process.
To the layman, this new state of order
resulting from increased disorder might just sound ‘neat’.
But one has to remember that at issue is the behavior of
millions of molecules. Prigogine (1984, 148) states that it
would never have been believed if it had not been observed,
and draws the following interesting conclusion: “To change
color all at once, molecules must have a way to
‘communicate.’ The system has to act as a whole.”
Research into this matter of dissipative
structures has developed this idea of communication. At the
bifurcation point, for example, particles separated by
macroscopic distances become linked: Events that happen in
one portion of a system thus have repercussions throughout.
Prigogine speculates on this ‘becoming’ linked:
Even before the
macroscopic bifurcation, the system is organized through
these long-range correlations. We come back to one of the
main ideas of Order Out of Chaos: nonequilibrium as a
source of order. Here the situation is especially clear. At
equilibrium molecules behave as essentially independent
entities; they ignore each other. We would like to call them
‘hypnons’, ‘sleepwalkers’. Though each one of them may be as
complex as we like, they ignore one another. However,
nonequilibrium wakes them tip and introduces a coherence
quite foreign to equilibrium. (Prigogine & Stengers 1984,
180-181)
This is Prigogine writing at his most
Whiteheadian. Apart from the emphasis on process, the
important term to notice is ‘coherence’ in the final
sentence. Understanding this new ‘order’ is the key to
understanding the apparent communication and not vice versa.
David Bohm has gone even further than Prigogine to devise a
cosmology of process. Bohm argues that there is a different
type of order-in-process supporting the macroscopic order as
described in everyday experience, including this chemical
clock example. In George Lucas’ words:
The apparent or
explicate order of the phenomena, described in classical and
Cartesian terminology, masks an underlying or implicate
order, which is a property of function of the
arrangement as a whole and not of any discrete part thereof.
(Lucas 1989, 193)
Applying this to the ‘hypnons’, the novel
coherence is more readily handled. Instead of acting through
communication, in a strict, macroscopic sense of the word,
the molecules are expressing this implicate order through
their activity. Communication presupposes entities merely
externally related, whereas this implicate order is a new
manifestation of the Whiteheadian concept of internal
relations. Communication takes place in time, and is
constrained by physical limits on the transfer of
information (the speed of light). Internal relations,
however, are atemporal. To use a poor example merely to
illustrate, the spatial relation between myself and the
centre of the moon changes automatically as we move closer
and--further from each other--there is no lag of time as
information moves from one side of the relation to the
other. Thus, the ordered activity of the molecules is not
the result of incredible macroscopic communication, but
rather an expression of the internal relatedness of the
system. Each molecule is an expression of the system as a
whole, at a fundamental level. This is a contemporary
development of Whitehead’s theory of ‘microscopic’ process.
These actual entities, called events or actual occasions,
are defined by their relations to each other actual entity
in the universe. They admit these relations as data,
synthesize their feelings or ‘prehensions’ of these entities
into a unified feeling, and finally take a definite
character to be used by future occasions in their own
moments of process. Thus it is the nature of each individual
character to include the entire universe in its own
constitution--the implicate order of David Bohm. Enduring
objects, such as molecules, are societies of these
occasions, and are already inter-related at the process
level. The unusual order observed in a chemical clock is
really merely a specialized example of the fundamental state
of reality, rather than a surprising exception.
Prigogine, however, sounds like Pirsig in
his discussion of the movement from order to disorder.
Pirsig divides Quality into Dynamic and static
quality--static quality is Dynamic Quality frozen, seized
upon and used--as a platform for further development. In
other words, Pirsig’s primary division into the world is
into a process that produces order from an undifferentiated
state.
Whitehead and Pirsig, however, have much
more to say about value phenomena than Prigogine or Bohm.
These scientists have been introduced merely to indicate the
relevance of the type of worldview Pirsig and Whitehead are
proposing. Much more will be said about order and disorder,
stasis and dynamis, as the discussion progresses. Rather
than proposing an eccentric view of the world, these men
are to be taken as being on the cutting edge of developments
of the ways in which we conceive of ourselves and the world
in which we live.
Part One
CHAPTER I
Alfred North Whitehead
Process and Reality...
The ultimate concept in the philosophy of
Alfred North Whitehead is creativity:
‘Creativity’ is the
universal of universals characterizing ultimate matter of
fact. It is that ultimate principle by which the many, which
are the universe disjunctively, become the one actual
occasion, which is the universe conjunctively. (Process
and Reality: Corrected Edition [PR],
21)
He says much the same thing on page 179
of Adventures of Ideas [AI], stressing that creativity “...is the actualization of
potentiality.” Whitehead goes on to unpack this word
by using many other words. Creativity is not an unusual word
in English, and neither are many of the terms (examples:
subject, object, process, actual, potential) he uses to
explain his thought. However, Whitehead has to rework
language to suit his concepts and these ordinary words take
on rather specialized meanings. This does not mean that
‘creativity’ becomes something completely other than what it
means in normal usage: Whitehead cannot take completely
unrestrained liberty with language, or he would defeat his
own aim of communication of ideas. Rather, he reworks some
terms to make himself particularly clear about his
philosophy. And this means that when he uses a term such as
‘creativity’, his reworking is a reworking of all the
baggage that comes along with any word.
In normal usage, creativity is typically
applied to a person--some types of people are creative.
These people are creators, and they create something through
the exercise of their creativity. Creativity is a doing a
process. So it is with Whitehead, construing creativity as
an ontological principle rather than a peculiarly human
activity: “Thus nature is a structure of evolving process.
The reality is the process.” (Science and the Modern
World [SMW], 72) We speak of creativity as if it is
something that people can have, when it really is just a
description of activity that suggests something about that
activity. What is created by a creator is something
new--something original, different from what was present
before the act of creation. Artists are creators, in common
parlance. And the role of artists in society suggests
something else about creativity. Artists are sometimes odd--they do
things that other people do not do. Non-artists sometimes
have a mixed attitude towards these people. To them, artists
are odd enough to be scorned sometimes but, in general, what
they do is valuable. This “activity in general” is
creativity and its results. There is something special about
this activity; indeed, the Biblical stories of creation
(which talk about the creator and the creation but not much
about the creativity itself other than the schedule
involved) have been an important part of one of the most
important influences on the development of Western society.
All of this is buried, shallowly, in the
word ‘creativity’. Whitehead wants to adapt this word to his
own thought--he has a specialized meaning for the word to
bear. This means that what he wants to refashion for his
writing is exactly that which has been described
already--the conventional trappings of ‘creativity’. Keeping
this in mind can help to clarify Whitehead’s metaphysics and
also to isolate exactly those aspects which are particularly
new.
Creativity is the ultimate principle in
Whitehead’s universe, but he makes it clear that the
creativity does not exist outside the creator and creation
of the process. What is interesting is that, essentially,
the creator and creation in Whitehead’s creativity are the
same thing. Rather, they are ‘phases’ in the particular
manifestations of the process--there is an impulse of sorts
to create something before something is created. But the
object and subject of the process are the same thing,
loosely speaking. Obviously, Whitehead is moving away from
common connotations of creativity in this notion, and it is
going to require use of Whiteheadian terms to get the idea
across. The manifestation of creativity is an ‘occasion’;
creativity does not actually exist in any other form than
the occasions. To refer to the occasion as a manifestation
of the process is to risk misconstruing Whitehead’s
philosophy. The process an occasion goes through can be
described as a moment of ‘concrescence’ the occasion makes
itself concrete. The occasion is the fundamental unit of
reality, but it is characterized by change--it is not
something static. On the contrary, when the occasion
acquires the ‘phase’ of creation, or finished product, it is
no longer in the process of creativity, and it ceases to be
an occasion. It becomes history, eternally unchanging in the
form it has taken. Developing an ontology based on these
events as a replacement for traditional subjects and objects
is Whitehead’s fundamental novel contribution to philosophy.
In its role as creator, an occasion is an active subject:
An occasion of
experience is an activity, analysable into modes of
functioning which jointly constitute its process of
becoming. Each mode is analysable into the total experience
as active subject, and into the thing or object with which
the special activity is concerned. (AI, 176)
An occasion is concerned with those forms
of data in its past, yet these forms are nothing more than
finished occasions. Thus, as a creation, the creative
subject becomes an object:
Thus subject and
object are relative terms. n occasion is a subject in
respect to its special activity concerning an object; and
anything is an object in respect to its provocation of some
special activity within a subject. (AI, 176)
It has been noted that occasions are the
fundamental units of reality. Macroscopic objects, such as
ourselves, are societies of occasions. Whitehead’s generic
tern for such a grouping is ‘nexus’: “...a nexus is a
set of actual entities in the unity of the relatedness
constituted by their prehensions of each other” (PR,
24). The occasions in a social nexus ‘feel’ compelled to
carry on the defining character of the society--there is an
order involving self-sustainment of character.
Creativity is a process, and process
involves sequence: temporal matters have to be accounted
for. For Whitehead, creations fall into the past; the future
awaits determination. This leaves the present to house the
occasion. Briefly put, the occasion starts as a collection
of ‘feelings’, which arise from the occasion’s history and
its relationship to potentiality in general. These feelings are the ‘special activity’
referred to in AI, and Whitehead most commonly calls them
‘prehensions’. Then the creation proposes or projects a
unity to itself regarding its own future unity. Put another
way, the occasion sees a possible unity of these feelings,
and this seeing results in a feeling of appetition. The
occasion is, by nature; compelled to move from a diversity
of prehensions to a unity called ‘satisfaction’: “Each
actual entity is conceived as an act of experience arising
out of data. It is a process of ‘feeling’ the many data, so
as to absorb them into the unity of one individual
‘satisfaction’” (PR, 40). The phase of unity or
satisfaction finishes the process of creation, naturally
enough, and the occasion perishes, leaving only the created
f on in history.
This character or unified form is now
available for future, or newly present, occasions to prehend
as a datum in new moments of process. Since the internal
process of the past occasion has indeed ‘passed’, its nature
has changed. During its period of actualization, the
occasion acts as a subject, acting on itself to develop its
own character. Once satisfied, this subject character is
done, and the finished datum exists as an object for new
occasions. Sorting out this relation of subject and object
is important to interpreting reality thoroughly. This
relationship has been a traditional area of conflict for
philosophers. Normally, the division refers to
epistemological matters: ‘objects’ exists out in the world,
and ‘subjects’ experience them. Whitehead’s philosophy
involves a metaphysical interpretation of
experience--reality experiences itself in these events
called occasions--and as a consequence, this traditional
subject-object relation is given a metaphysical
interpretation also. For Whitehead, process is reality:
“…the term ‘real’ refers to the creative activity.” (AI,
179) Process and Reality could have been titled Process
is
Reality. Thus, when an event finishes its process in
satisfaction, it passes from process-reality into a role as
datum-potentiality for future realities. The creative
subject is the life of the world; created objects have spent
their moment of process-actuality. However, stepping away
from the individual occasion and looking at reality as a
macroscopic whole, these objects are the foundation for the
creative process.
Thus viewed in
abstraction objects are passive, but viewed in conjunction
they carry the creativity which drives the world. The
process of creation is the form of unity of the Universe. (AI,
179)
Given a unified term, an occasion can be
called a ‘subject-superject’. The ‘subject’ is the becoming,
and the ‘superject’ is the objectified datum thrown forward
for future use.
An actual entity is
at once the subject experiencing and the superject of its
experiences. It is subject-superject, and neither half of
this description can for a moment be lost sight of. (PR,
29)
There is a little more to a prehension
than the mere relation of object to subject. Firstly, there
is how the subject feels the object. This is the ‘subjective
form’ of the prehension. This subjective form is central to
the freedom of becoming of the occasion. Without this
quality of feeling, data would be at best merely repeated.
But, through the subjective form of prehensions, the
occasion can freely project its own satisfaction. This
projected goal is the ‘subjective aim’ of the occasion.
Briefly put, from the diversity of prehended objects, the
occasion projects a unity, or unified state to actualize.
The process that then goes on is the harmonizing of feelings
in accordance with this target:
“The ‘subjective
aim’, which controls the becoming of a subject, is that
subject feeling a proposition [on propositions below] with
the subjective form of purpose to realize it in that process
of self-creation” (PR, 25).
The rational and emotional aspects of
this creating are important to note. The occasion is nothing
more than its prehensions--these are feelings, or, to use a
term out of specifically human experience for the analogy,
emotions. In the ‘beginning’ phase of creativity, the
diversity of these prehensions in their particular
combination in this occasion conjures up a desire for
unity/satisfaction. This desire is very real, in that it
takes the form of a specific projected goal. This is a
rational or mental aspect of the process. But the rational
arises out of the diversity of emotions:
Each actuality is
essentially bipolar, physical and mental, and the physical
inheritance is essentially accompanied by a conceptual
reaction partly conformed to it, and partly introductory of
a relevant novel contrast, but always introducing emphasis,
valuation, and purpose. (PR, 108)
Whitehead typically uses ‘physical’ and
‘mental’ instead of ‘emotional’ and ‘rational’. His reason
for this is to preclude the mistake of conceiving the
occasion as a ‘mind’, as opposed to a ‘body’. The occasions
are everything, and to divide between mind and body is to
make a rather superficial distinction. But ‘emotional’ and
‘rational’ are closer to the ideas more commonly involved in
creativity. They can take the place of Whitehead’s terms, at
the risk of the afore-mentioned mistake, adequately.
The kind of creativity at issue for
Whitehead is not ex nihilo, rather, it is a process of
actualization of possibilities. Whitehead calls these
possibilities ‘eternal objects’. The eternal objects are
deficient in actuality--they are real, but not actual or
concrete in the sense that occasions are. They are the forms
potentiality takes for the occasions When an occasion
prehends past events, it feels a welter of diverse eternal
objects. These data are thrown forward for future
creativity. This has not just pushed the ex nihilo factor
one step back--the eternal objects are eternal potentiality.
Apart from actual occasions, these eternal objects reside,
available for creativity, in what Whitehead names the
‘primordial nature of god’. Each occasion is in contact with
this primordial nature. This ‘mingling’ of potentiality with
actuality provides both the full extent of potentiality for
each occasion, as well as the drive or urge towards
actualization.
Creativity is the action of the present,
but both the past and the future are intrinsically important
to the process. The future is a lure, devoid of actuality. To actualize is the challenge
‘motivating’ each occasion. The past is history; what has
been actualized fades from the activity of the present into
the eternal stability of the past. Separating the past,
present and future clears the matter up, but introduces new
problems as well. It must be understood what kind of process
is taking place, and the role of the past in the present
activity is particularly important. The occasion is its
prehensions of history and of the primordial nature of god.
Whitehead stresses that occasions cannot affect each
other contemporaneously, and his reason for this is part of
the explanation of the process. It has been stated that the
creator and creation in this, activity are phases of the
same thing. In more familiar philosophical terminology,
‘subject’ and ‘object’ can replace creator and ‘creation’.
The occasion is the subject in the process that turns its
diverse life into an object. This object then ceases
processing, and fades into the past as form. And it is as
objects that ‘things’ interact in the historical
environment. History is, essentially, a static bank of data
for the activity of the present. History is ‘static’
because, as has been noted, past occasions have spent the
life that is their internal process, and all that remains is
the superjected satisfactions. These objectified forms are
related to each other as objects; occasions arise ‘on the
edge’ of this web of relations, with an urge to become
something. At this ‘moment’ of unrest, the occasion is a
subject projecting a goal for itself, but, as far as
actuality is concerned, it is only an undefined meeting
place of prehensions. The passage of the occasion from
subject to object involves the rejection of some prehensions
as relevant to the proposed unity, the taking up and
synthesizing of the remainder, until diversity is gone and
what has become is a unity.
Some subtle unpacking of ‘creativity’ is
now occurring. Creativity is a matter of keeping some data,
rejecting other data, and then unifying what has been kept
into a felt whole. This activity goes on every fraction of a
second, according to Whitehead, and yet the term
‘creativity’, as commonly taken, might mislead. Things stay
the same--we see that, to a very large extent, in our
environment. But Whitehead is saying that change is
fundamental to the universe. Moreover, he is saying that the
occasion, the creator in creativity; determines the end
result. Is there an arbitrariness built into his metaphysics
that observation does not support? Whitehead’s answer is
‘no’. Past form exerts a claim on the present. Occasions of
low complexity of vision, so to speak, will repeat past
form. The conceptual novelty, introduced through the
subjective f on of the physical prehensions, is virtually
negligible in many occasions. Occasions of higher complexity
will change to a greater extent, but data for change is
still obtained from the past, implying some sort of
probability of continuity.
Difficulties regarding creativity must
here be faced. Whitehead says (PR, 21) that creativity
is the principle of novelty in the universe. ‘Novelty’ has
to be treated carefully because it has subtle shades of
meanings buried in it. Whitehead means primarily novelty of
instance, not of kind. Novelty of instance means new
occasions repeat previously actualized data; novelty of kind
means the introduction of novel data into the stream of
process. However, since the primordial nature of god
contains the eternal objects, which constitute infinite
potentiality differentiated already, it can be argued that
novelty of kind is impossible, since realization always
involves what is already conceptually, albeit deficiently,
actual. In this light, novelty of kind is, at best, a
special kind of novelty of instance--the datum involved might
never have been actualized, but it was certainly
conceptualized. There is merely a lesser degree of
repetition involved. Now, this has serious implications for
creativity in general that will subsequently be explored.
What it is important to recognize is that creativity, in
common parlance, contains connotations that involve both
novelty of kind and novelty of instance. Creators supposedly
dabble in both repetition and in more ‘pure’ creation, if
there is such a thing. Moreover, there are subtle problems
regarding process that have to be examined for both
connotations, especially if one is going to pick one side
over the other, as Whitehead has (seemingly) done.
The particular problem Whitehead must
sort out is this: creativity draws from the past. Even at
the macroscopic level of things, it is possible to look at
the past and draw connections between events. But where does
all this start? One possibility is that it has been going on
forever; another is that there is some kind of source of
information that constitutes some kind of beginning. Apart
from traditional problems involved with speculation on the
origin of the universe, Stephen Hawking’s work in cosmology
(his ‘no boundary’ model of the universe) suggests that the
concept of a ‘beginning’ might not apply at all to this
matter. The solution is to allow the occasions direct access
to the primordial nature of god all along and not just once
at the ‘beginning’ of the universe. Now the matter of ‘when’
it all began is irrelevant. The term “source of information”
is important because the process involved is ultimately
self-determining. To suggest a creator in the biblical sense
is to risk undermining the power of the individual
occasions. Rather, what is needed is some kind of reservoir
of material that somehow informs, or has informed, the world
of experience.
Whitehead’s solution, as already noted,
is one aspect of god. The way it works is this: amongst the
data occasions really actualize are those described by
‘descriptive words’ such as ‘yellow’ and ‘car’. There is an
infinite number of these descriptions--the eternal objects.
These eternal objects ‘exist’ as potentialities, but they
are not actualized as individual eternal objects. Rather, each occasion realizes particular
combinations of these objects--a yellow car, for instance,
which could probably be described in many other terms.
Presumably, if one could use words to describe an instance
completely (which one cannot), then one would have pointed
out all of the eternal objects taken up by the occasions
making up the particular car. ‘Physical’ prehensions
constitute the initial phase of process. A physical
prehension involves feeling the objectified past. In the next
phase of concrescence, abstraction of eternal objects from
the particular past occasions takes place. Prehensions of
eternal objects are conceptual prehensions. The occasion is
moving from past fact to relevant potentiality, and the
possibility of practical novelty is arising. Occasions of
particularly high complexity can go one step further and
propose to themselves eternal objects that have not been
merely abstracted from the past.
In PR, Whitehead often cites
Hume’s example of a person being able to imagine a colour never experienced. Given a sampling of shades of
blue, Hume and Whitehead think a person could successfully
imagine a shade never before experienced by that person. For
Whitehead, this shade exists as an eternal object, but it
has not been actualized in the historic route of occasions
leading up to the present subject. The consideration of this
colour, then, is the introduction of novel data into the
actual world. This is taken by Whitehead as evidence for the
direct connection of each occasion to the primordial nature
of god. Accordingly, a distinction in types of potentiality
must be introduced by Whitehead to reinforce the distinction
between the activities of the physical and conceptual
prehensions. The past which the physical prehensions feel is
‘real’ potentiality, the realm of eternal objects is
‘general’ or ‘pure’ potentiality.
It was mentioned earlier that the
subjective aim was the prehending of a proposition with the
subjective form of purpose to realize it. A ‘proposition’
takes on a special metaphysical character in Whitehead’s
philosophy. Instead of merely being conceptual descriptions
of elements of reality, propositions operate as ‘lures for
feeling’ (v. PR, 25), and a verbal description can never
exhaust such an entity. The logical subject of a proposition
is an actual nexus, and the predicate is some eternal
object. A proposition is a sort of bridge between actuality
and potentiality. Formally defined:
A proposition is
the potentiality of the objectification of certain
presupposed actual entities via certain qualities and
relations, the objectification being for some unspecified
subject for which the presupposition has meaning in direct
experience. The judgment is the conscious affirmation by a
particular subject--for which the presupposition holds--that
this potentiality is, or is not, realized for it. (PR,
196-197)
Take, as an example, the entertainment of
the perfectly mundane statement, “The car is yellow.” ‘Car’
is a definite nexus, identifiable in history as an existing
object. ‘Yellow’, in this case, is a tentative description--the linking
of a descriptive word, or eternal object, with a society of
occasions. Whether or not the car is in fact yellow takes
some degree of examination--there is creative activity
based upon the proposition, ‘the car is yellow.’ Important
to note here is the possibility of error. If there can be
error at the metaphysical level of creativity, then there
can also be novelty of data. Mere repetition of physical
prehensions precludes both error and novelty.
But now new problems are arising and
Whitehead remains unfortunately vague on some of these
matters. Eternal objects need some place to exist as eternal
objects, and Whitehead puts them in the ‘primordial nature’
of god. God is an unfinished occasion, meaning that god
exists in the present always, never fading into the past as
finished, but moving into the future as the actual world
progresses. The occasions that are becoming the actual world
get their data from history, but it would seem that at one
time in the past god would have to have been accessed for
some initial information. The problem with this is that
things interact as objects that is, when an occasion looks
to the past to take up some prehensions, the past is
completely objectified in that it is the form remaining from
occasions that have spent their creative power. God is never
objectified. There is no unified form of infinite eternal
objects for some ancient occasion to access. Whitehead’s
solution is the activity of two different kinds of
prehensions physical and conceptual. The physical prehensions
feel past data--the objects referred to above. Conceptual
prehensions, however, directly draw on the primordial nature
of god. They do not need ‘objects’ for their activity. In
this way, potentiality resides throughout the world, and not
‘somewhere or ‘somewhen’ else’, as the somewhat metaphorical
language of religion might suggest. This continuous tapping
of potentiality provides the opportunity for occurrence of
novelty of kind, or at least for the looser novelty of
instance discussed earlier.
Whitehead discusses a second aspect of
god--god’s consequent nature. The consequent nature of god
has physical prehensions of the world. The reason given for
this development is fairly straight-forward: Whitehead’s
philosophy is one of ultimate relativity, and this means
that god and the world must be inter-related and defining.
What the world is to god is actuality of the conceptual side
of god’s nature--the eternal objects. What the consequent
nature of god is to the world is unity.
Thus, analogously
to all actual entities, the nature of God is dipolar. He has
a primordial nature and a consequent nature. The consequent
nature of God is conscious, and it is the realization of the
actual world in the unity of his nature, and through the
transformation of his wisdom. The primordial nature is
conceptual, the consequent nature is the weaving of God’s
physical feelings upon his primordial concepts. (PR,
345)
The world is self-defining, but atomistic
why should there be any unity to history and the progression
of creativity in to the future. Whitehead’s answer is an
appeal to the consequent nature of god. But conversely, god
attains a diverse actuality from the process being realized
in the world.
All of this is somewhat confusing in its
quasi-mysticism, but some sense can be made of it by
relocating the discussion in the familiar territory of
common connotations of creativity. God and the world exist in
the throes of creativity. They are both creator and creation
for each other. To separate them is to misrepresent the
relativity built into Whitehead’s thought. Process is
fundamental to this metaphysic, and to focus on the
manifestations of the creativity is to risk getting lost in
confusing puzzles involving things or beings. But the
process unifies the particular workings because they are
workings of the process--they have to be unified.
A speculative note on creativity is
warranted. The discussion has been quietly concerned with
dualities, and the interaction between poles in process.
Creativity, at its most general level, suggests change and
an end to change. The universe is in process--is it moving
towards completion? The answer is both yes and no.
Completion and change are built right into every occasion. The universe is complete at every moment--this is, perhaps, the unity attained through connection
with the consequent nature of god. And yet, since everything
is still fundamentally process, there is an inherent impulse
to further actualization. New occasions will arise and
suffer the unrest of diverse prehensions, and they will be
satisfied in due process. “The many become one, and are
increased by one.” (PR, 21) To ask why this happens
is to ask why creativity is creativity--it is an odd
question. At some level of reality, as Whitehead fully
knows, language is going to be unable to deal with matters
without further reworking.
I have been writing about the world
around us, yet there has been discussion of phases of
concrescence, and of eternal objects in the primordial
nature of god. It must be remembered that reality the world
around us, fully and completely. For Whitehead, actuality
requires potentiality--this is the reason for the discussion
of god’s primordial nature. They require each other, by
definition. There is a certain element of abstraction in
description--reality must be remembered as unified. In a
paper entitled “Process and Reality,” Whitehead (1948,
89-90) reminds us of this very point:
Enlarge your view
of the final fact which is permanent amid change. In its
essence, realization is limitation, exclusion. But this
ultimate fact includes in its appetitive vision all
possibilities of order, possibilities at once incompatible
and unlimited with a fecundity beyond imagination...
The key to
metaphysics is this doctrine of mutual immanence, each side
lending to the other a factor necessary for its reality. The
notion of one perfection of order, which is (I believe)
Plato’s doctrine, must go the way of the one possible
geometry. The universe is more various, more Hegelian.
… and Value
Whitehead drops all sorts of hints about
value through his writing, but he never explicitly
formulates a theory of value. He does make it quite clear
that value phenomena are rooted in reality at the process
level, but the relation between his theory of prehensive
occasions and valuation is left unclear. In SMW, he
cites the Romantic poets of the nineteenth century as
champions of the insistence on the reality of value.
Both Shelley and
Wordsworth emphatically bear witness that nature cannot be
divorced from its aesthetic values; and that these values
arise from the cumulation--in some sense, of the brooding
presence of the whole in its various parts. Thus we gain
from the poets the doctrine that a philosophy of nature must
concern itself at least with these six notions: change,
value, eternal objects, endurance, organism, interfusion. (SMW,
87-88)
That is what Whitehead’s work was--an
attempt at a philosophy of nature. To greater or lesser
extent, I have introduced Whitehead’s treatment of all of
the notions listed except for value. Now, in this section on
his treatment of value, I will have to bring all of the
others to bear on the matter. In PR, Whitehead stressed that
when dealing with the ultimate notions of a philosophy, one
must beware of using terms of high abstraction to describe
concepts or aspects of the world that support such
abstractions. Rather, the thinker must use the fundamental
terms interwovenly, explaining each other and needing each
other. Thus, in this treatment of value, the fundamental
notions will illuminate each other.
In one of his later books, Modes of Thought
[MT],
Whitehead writes fairly clearly about the role of value in
his process philosophy. The first chapter is entitled “Importance”, and therein Whitehead reaffirms the link
between reality and value. “We may well ask whether the
doctrine of perspective is not an endeavour to reduce the
concept of importance to mere matter-of-fact devoid of
intrinsic interest. Of course such reduction is impossible.”
(MT, 15). ‘Importance’ seems to be the term Whitehead
uses most consistently with those aspects of his thinking
that could be seen as constituting a theory of value. In
common parlance, ‘importance’ is a more aggressive, and
perhaps more relative, term than ‘value’. Antiques have
‘value’, quietly sitting in corners of rooms or in museums,
whereas matters of ‘importance’ thrust themselves upon us,
demanding attention. I say this can be construed as a more
relative status, because today’s things of ‘importance’ tend
to fade, whereas the ‘value’ of the antique is a longer
lasting ‘quality.’ ‘Value’, in both philosophical circles
and in common speech, seems to be some aspect of an item
that helps define, it; ‘importance’ sticks to something for
a while, then passes. By using ‘importance’ as his term for
value, I think Whitehead is stressing two aspects of value
and his process philosophy:
1) the presence of value in that
ephemeral yet vital spark that is the process of the
occasion, and;
2) the throwing forward into the
future of the satisfied occasion as something to be reckoned
with by new moments of concrescence.
Whitehead says much the same thing on the
next page of MT. This thesis about reality and value
is meant as a prolegomena to future work on value
issues--ethical and aesthetic matters, for instance. ‘Value’
is here used as a fundamental term. Whitehead gives to
‘importance’ this position:
Importance is a
generic notion which has been obscured by the overwhelming
prominence of a few of its innumerable species. The terms
‘morality’, ‘logic’, ‘religion’, ‘art’, have each of them
been claimed as exhausting the whole meaning of importance.
Each of them denotes a subordinate species. But the genus
stretches beyond any finite group of species. (MT, 16)
This makes sense, for the macroscopic
items with which ‘morality’ and ‘art’ are concerned are
societies of occasions. That is, their existence is a matter
of realized potentiality in the forms of nexuses.
Correspondingly, their particular types
of value should be products of the same process. Now, both
finite realms are different ‘shapes’ of the same ‘material’
(to use a crude analogy). More specifically then, and most
briefly, Whitehead (MT, 16) defines importance as
follows: “The generic aim of process is the attainment of
importance, in that species and to that extent which in that
instance is possible.” In other words, value, in some form
or other, is the motivation of creativity in its
metaphysical roles (the ‘movement’ of the world as a whole,
and the life of each actual occasion). This is my starting point. In order to
make clear what I think the role of value an process is,
four aspects of the description of the occasion in process
are going to be central:
1) the prehensions, both physical
and conceptual,
2) the subjective aim of the occasion,
3)
the satisfaction of the occasion, and;
4) god’s primordial
and consequent natures. As always with Whitehead’s view of
the world, these divisions are somewhat artificial, and I
hope they will blend into each other as the description of
valuation
develops.
It should be noted that by drawing out
four elements of Whitehead’s analysis of atomized process as
forming the foundation of valuation, I am differing from
other commentators on this matter. William Hendrichs Leue,
in his Harvard thesis, Metaphysical Foundations For a Theory
of Value in the Philosophy of A N Whitehead (1952), provides
a concise critique of attempts to dismiss Whitehead ideas
about value as constituting:
1) a psychological theory of
value, or
2) a formalistic theory, or
3) a self-realizationalist
theory, or finally
4) merely an inconsistent theory.
I think Leue is correct in seeing more in Whitehead than these
options provide, and I do not intend to repeat his
criticisms here. Moreover, Leue then presents a two tiered
theory involving ‘absolute value’ and ‘relative value’ as
being best suggested by Whitehead’s metaphysics. By so
doing, Leue starts out bravely trying to balance the value
of each entity against the absolute value he sees in god’s
primordial valuation of the eternal objects, but in the end
he largely fails, in my opinion, to stick with his two types
of value. Absolute value ends up being the value that really
matters, so to speak, making relative value largely
unimportant. And if one sticks to Whitehead’s use of
‘importance’ as the generic ten for value then, if something
is not important, then it is not valuable and is definitely
not value per se.
Leue’s error lies in ignoring the already
cited warning of Whitehead about describing reality in
dualistic tens and subsequently adhering too literally to
Whitehead’s dualistic treatment of value in the lecture
“Immortality” (1948, 60). In this lecture, Whitehead
discusses the universe in terms of two abstracted
aspects--the World of Activity, and the World of Value. The
first is the world of transience, and the second of
permanence. Leue’s analysis of Whitehead’s thought about
valuation stresses exactly this duality. Yet, in
“Immortality”, Whitehead is very careful to make clear at
the outset that he is dealing with a description that uses
abstracted notions:
The two words
[‘immortality’ and ‘mortality’] refer to two aspects
which are presupposed in every experience which we enjoy. I
will term these aspects “The Two Worlds”. They require each
other, and together constitute the concrete Universe. Either
World considered by itself is an abstraction. For
this reason, any adequate description of one World includes
characterizations derived from the other, in order to
exhibit the concrete Universe in its relation to either of
its two aspects. These Worlds are the major examples of
perspectives of the Universe. The word “evaluation”
expresses the elucidation of one of the abstractions
by reference to the other. (1948, 61) [emphasis mine]
In his treatment of Whitehead’s thought,
Leue ran afoul of the degree of abstraction in Whitehead’s
discussion of evaluation. In my approach to this matter, I
am going to attempt to present a more unified theory,
supported on four metaphysical pillars. These four topics
for discussion are, of course, abstracted from the unified
process and presuppose each other. For clarity’s sake,
cross-reference will be avoided as much as possible, but
will not be eliminated entirely.
1) The Prehensions: By and large, the
prehensions, both physical and conceptual, constitute the
entire life of an occasion. The physical prehensions have
past occasions as their objects--they feel the past and
bring that data into relevance for the present concrescence.
Conceptual prehensions have eternal objects as their objects
These are either abstracted directly from the past, or they
are ‘suggested’ by, although not contained in, the past
data. In this latter case, novelty enters the world if the
new eternal objects are admitted into the occasion’s
concrescence. Occasions of low complexity issue in very
little conceptual novelty; from past to present there is
virtually complete reproduction of data. At the macroscopic
level, objects such as stones can be understood as being
societies of such reproductive occasions. In human
experience, the conceptual entertainment of novelty is of
dominating importance. For this consideration of value, both
physical and conceptual prehensions have vital roles.
Physical prehensions provide the basis
for ‘physical purposes’--the lure of the mere reproduction
already introduced. Such repetition is a testimony to the
value already present in the data. Such physical
reproduction reckons with the superjected value shapes
presented by the past. Without physical prehension and
reproduction--the satisfied occasions would have no real
presence in the world--merely their spot in the objective
immortality provided by the consequent nature of god.
The conceptual prehensions, however,
provide the seed of new value for this occasion, as opposed
to mere sustaining of value thrown forward by the past. Even
in the physical purposes derived from the physical
prehensions of past data, there is a process of
‘consideration’, resulting in emphasis or denial to the
process. What is emphasized or denied access is the form of
the datum--the potentiality, or the eternal object. These
potentials are dealt with by conceptual prehension. This
matter of examination and consideration, to use
anthropomorphic terms, is the first glimmering of the
conceptual abilities of the occasion:
In a physical purpose the subjective form
has acquired a special appetition--adversion or aversion--in
respect to that eternal object as a realized element of
definiteness in that physical datum. This acquisition is
derived from the conceptual prehension. (PR, 184)
Emphasis and denial, adversion and
aversion--this is valuation at work in the most basic form
of concrescence.
More complex mental activity consists in
the introduction and entertainment of propositions. Here, a
physical object--a social nexus--is felt as maybe being in a
certain state. This is the association, rightly or wrongly,
of eternal objects with the physical world. The resultant
process of action upon this feeling can result in
confirmation, error, or the introduction of novel content
into the world. In this third role, conceptual prehensions
accomplish something the physical prehensions lack. The
physical prehensions have to do with the ‘perished’ world
only; conceptual prehensions this data and abstract those
forms of definiteness from it. This can result in the
consideration of eternal possibilities not actually present
in the past, and hence a new datum for further prehensions
can be realized.
By introducing novel content into
transcendent creativity, conceptual prehensions increase the
variety of data, and therefore of value-forms, in the world.
The possibilities for future occasions become more varied--‘deeper’ unified feelings can be achieved, intensifying
value-experiences on a microscopic scale.
2) Subjective Aim: To a considerable
extent, the prehensions are focused on the past, and not
nearly so much on the future. They are the feeling and
analysis of the entire world for that occasion, but they are
not constitutive of that occasion, for and in itself. From
the prehending of data and the admittance of new
possibilities comes a unified ideal for the end result of
the concrescence. This is the subjective aim--a projected
concrete form into which to resolve the diversity of
feelings of the primary phases of the process.
The subjective aim is a lure for the
occasion’s process. Through admittance and denial, emphasis
and demotion of relevance, the data and possibilities are
resolved into a unity that is the satisfied occasion. The subjective aim is the projection of
this unity before it has been accomplished. The aim is an
ideal of harmony--the diversity of feelings must be resolved
into a unified function.
Consider a proposition in its form of
such a lure. The result of entertainment of a proposition
can be accuracy, error, or novelty. But these states only
arise in the satisfaction of the occasion’s concrescence.
Before it is anything, it is a lure--an aim or goal felt as
interesting (i.e., valuable). The proposing of an end is the
beginning of self-constitution in actuality. The subjective
aim of an occasion is the proposing of a form of value for
itself. This lure is felt as value before it is actually
realized.
This is the germ of those theories of
valuation that suggest that value is the result of a want,
or deficiency. For example, in Principia Ethica, G.
E. Moore comments on an example involving a glass of wine,
criticizing the value theory of John Stuart Mill. At issue
for Mill is pleasure: he holds that the value of a glass of
wine consists in the pleasure to be had when the wine is
experienced. In terms more appropriate to the Whiteheadian
comparison, the proposing of a goal to be actualized is a
source of value in the world. Moore does not agree. Rather,
he thinks there is a pre-wine pleasure that results in
wanting the wine, and that this pleasure disappears with the
obtaining. This is the function of the subjective aim--the
value felt before the goal is attained, or the value that
makes the goal a goal at all. In other words, by Moore’s
analysis there is a genuine value in the desire for the
wine, before the wine is had, and for Mill there is,
strictly speaking, no real value until the wine is
possessed.
It is important to notice that the
subjective aim is the mark of individuality (and hence of
unity) on the original diversity of feelings. It is
self-proposed as a reaction to the data, making it doubly
valuable. This self-relevance is key to the actuality
Whitehead sees in process. “An entity is actual, when it has
significance for itself. By this it is meant that an actual
entity functions in respect to its own determination.” (PR,
25) In this brief passage, Whitehead is as much as equating
actuality and value.
3) Satisfaction: Satisfaction consists in
achievement of the unity self-proposed in the subjective
aim. The process is finished--all felt aspects have been
reconciled in a unity of. feeling involving either emphasis
and involvement or ‘negative prehension’--denial of access
into the satisfaction.
The final phase in
the process of concrescence, constituting an actual entity,
is one complex, fully determinate feeling. This final phase
is termed the satisfaction. It is fully determinate (a) as
to its genesis, (b) as to its objective character for the
transcendent creativity, and (c) as to its
prehension--positive or negative--of every item in the
universe. (PR, 25-26)
With the satisfaction, the occasion is
‘done’--it was motivated by a diversity of feelings which
have now been unified. What remains is the fixed form of the
resultant unity. To a large extent, the satisfied occasion
loses its actuality as it passes into history. as fixed
data. However, inasmuch as it is the form proposed as, and
now achieved as, significant to itself, it is actual
according to Whitehead’s definition as cited on the previous
page.
The satisfied occasion is now thrown
forward as historical data to be reckoned with by new
occasions. As such, it is a form of past value to be
considered in its relevance to new processes of
concrescence. If compelling enough, the future may wish to
reproduce this form of value, thereby re-enacting the
process of charging this form with this actuality of an
occasion. Thus, in itself the satisfied occasion is of
positive value. If it is re-enacted in the future, it is of
new positive value. But if it is dismissed in a negative
prehension, then its value in transcendent creativity is
down-graded although whatever is left of its
self-significance remains.
This throwing forward of the finished
occasion on a macroscopic scale is essential to the
understanding of human value matters. On one side, the
ethical notion of responsibility involves the manner in
which we, as self-determining organisms, ‘throw’ ourselves
into the world:
Further, in the
case of those actualities whose immediate experience is most
completely open to us, namely, human beings, the final
decision of the immediate subject-superject, constituting
the ultimate modification of the subjective aim, is the
foundation of our experience of responsibility, of
approbation or of disapprobation, or self-approval or of
self-reproach, of freedom, of emphasis. (PR, 47)
On the other side, aesthetic creation and
experience involve both the receiving and throwing forward
of something in all of its objective value nature.
4) God’s Primordial and Consequent
Natures: It has been stated that the primordial nature of
god is the ‘home’ of the eternal objects--the realm of
possibility. God, in Whitehead’s scheme, is not to be
omitted from the metaphysical description. God is the
archetypal occasion, involving process, physical and
conceptual prehensions, and aim. The primordial nature of
god is not merely a warehouse of forms of possibility: it is
god’s conceptualization of all of possibility. These
conceptualizations Whitehead deems ‘valuations’. However,
value is tied to actuality, and the occasion that is god is
never satisfied, i e., god is never unified in a harmonized
form of value. The valuations of god’s primordial nature are
directed towards the realm of microscopic process:
The conceptual
feelings, which compose his primordial nature, exemplify in
their subjective forms their mutual sensitivity and their
subjective unity of subjective aim. These subjective forms
are valuations determining the relative relevance of eternal
objects for each occasion of actuality. (PR, 344)
Thus, potentiality is ‘geared’ towards
realization God’s primordial nature, Whitehead stresses, is
neither conscious nor physically actual. This conceptual
valuation of possibility relative to the actual occasions is
directed completely toward the microscopic process Whitehead
describes as constituting reality God participates in
actuality, in its full sense, derivatively--the consequent
nature of god is, “the realization of the actual world in
the unity of his nature.” (PR, 345) God, in this
sense, is the ‘irrational’ principle of concretion that
‘saves’ the world at each moment of creation. He is
actuality’s glue, in his consequent role. In this role, god
preserves the superjected value-form of each occasion,
protecting the moment from eternal dissolve.
Eternal objects, in the concrescence of
an occasion, function as conceptual lures. Typically, such a
lure is only a sub-section of the entire class of eternal
objects God’s primordial valuation, however, orders them
all, relative to all ‘creation.’ This primordial valuation
is also the primordial lure to concretion for the universe
God’s primordial nature constitutes the appetition towards
realization at the ‘basis’ of the universe. “He is the lure
for feeling, the eternal urge of desire.” (PR, 344)
Deficient in actuality, god is, in his primordial nature,
the precondition for each actual occasion’s value-charged
and value-achieving actuality.
God, in his two natures, makes possible
the value functions of the world of occasions. But god’s
actuality is entirely derived from the world of process, and
that is where value actually is why value god actually has
is derived from the world of actuality God cannot be said to
provide a different--e.g., absolute--kind of value than that
present in the world. Rather, god cannot be understood apart
from the flux of occasions. His natures are aspects of the
universe, logically necessary according to Whitehead, but
neither superexistent nor actually valuable. God’s
primordial valuation of the eternal objects stands as a sort
of external ideal standard of value for concrescence.
However, this is to be understood not as something reality
always fails to reach, and therefore as being lacking in
ultimate value--this is an ideal standard, meaning that the
actual world realizes these eternal value-forms after
entertaining them as conceptual ideals. It is a standard
only in the sense of being what actuality has at its
disposal to accomplish at its widest and deepest level of
contrasted feeling. The eternal objects are the
never-changing, and thus standard, forms of possibility for
reality in process.
In this brief discussion, terms central
to Whitehead’s conception of value (such as ‘variety’,
‘contrast’, ‘novelty’) have been introduced without much
comment. They will be dealt with in Chapter V.
CHAPTER II
Robert Pirsig
Reality=Value
In his two books, Zen and The Art Of
Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values [ZMM] and
particularly Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals, Robert
Pirsig outlines his Metaphysics of Value, or, to use the
word he prefers, his Metaphysics of Quality. The basic tenet
is what the name suggests--reality is quality. A preliminary
note about this identity of value and reality is warranted. Obviously, this is a problematic
identity, not least of all because it appears to be
dramatically counter-intuitive. This problem is taken up in
some detail in this chapter. Robert Pirsig is not a rigorous
philosopher and I do not wish to chastise him for loose
logic when he is not pretending to employ such a tool. I see
Pirsig as a process philosopher: in his exploration of
Quality, he develops a portrait of a universe that
fundamentally experiences itself. I am taking his work to be
an examination of the role value in process. This largely accounts for my studying
Pirsig in connection with Alfred North Whitehead.
Furthermore, even though the identity of value and reality
might be problematic, the use of value as a fundamental term
in the analysis of existence could very well be accurate. To
this end, Pirsig’s philosophy stands as a revealing attempt.
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