Below is an article I’ve just finished that will eventually be translated into German and published in The Whitehead Handbook (Verlag).
Alfred North Whitehead: Ideas and Influence
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5 responses to “Alfred North Whitehead: Ideas and Influence”
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Wow! Congrats Matt!
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Hey,
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Allow me to use this as an excuse to write an overly long comment. This goes somewhat beyond the scope of the chapter and may not be much of a problem for it. I wonder, though, if it’s fair to say “if only eternal objects were real, absolutely everything would be possible”? This may just be a semantic question–namely, a question of what we mean by “possible.” But I would figure the most readily available understandings of possible are either merely the typical sense in modal logic (wherein anything necessary is also therefore possible), or a more specific sense, as in contingent (where something is contingent if it is possible but not necessary).
I would say an eternal object is a contingent possibility _for_ an actual occasion if (and only if), more properly put, it is (contingently) possible that said actual occasion be (in part) determined by said eternal object. But that’s more saying something about the actual occasion than the eternal object. On the other hand, I would argue anything we can say about eternal objects in themselves must be said necessarily. I think this follows if we properly unpack what “internal” and “external” relations mean for Whitehead–since these are really modal terms, where “internal” and “external” are synonymous with essential or accidental. Hence, when Whitehead says eternal objects are externally related to actual occasions but internally related to other eternal objects (SMW 160), he is indicating that anything said of eternal objects per se must be said necessarily.
If I may indulge in introducing some symbolic machinery here: we could have individual variables (x, y, z) interpreted as ranging over actual entities, predicate variables (F, G, H) interpreted as ranging over eternal objects, and then the typical modal operators for possibility (◊) and necessity (□).
I might put it this way: when talking about actual entities being characterized by eternal objects, there are some facts about said characterizations that are contingent:
∀x∃F(◊Fx ∧ ¬□Fx)
(On the other hand, there are, according to Whitehead, statements about eternal objects’ characterizing actual entities that are not just possible but _are_ necessarily the case:
∀x∃F(□Fx)
These are metaphysical propositions.)
However, if we move to statements about eternal objects–and, thus, predicating eternal objects of other eternal objects–I would think these are all necessary:
∀F¬∃G(◊GF ∧ ¬□GF)
(I’m neglecting to introduce a type theory here, but it’d actually be necessary at this step, and a type-theoretical approach seems to be the crux of understanding what Whitehead meant by abstractive hierarchies.)
We might wonder if there even _is_ such a thing as eternal objects that can be predicated of other eternal objects for Whitehead. In Science and the Modern World and Process and Reality at least he’s somewhat clear that there are, and in two different ways. First, and I think most clearly, there are what he calls “general principles”: “A ‘general principle’ is an eternal object which is only illustrated through its ‘instances,’ which are also eternal objects. … For example, colour is a general principle and colours are the instances” (PR 194).
Hence if we wanted to say that some sensum is a shade of red, we would be predicating the general principle red of the eternal object that is that sensum. Thus far, at least, it seems warranted to say that anything determinately said of just eternal objects, is said necessarily: no sensum is going to change from being one color to another in the sense said above.
The other statement we could make about eternal objects on their own are statements about the various relationships they are components of–or, if they are complex eternal objects, that they are analyzable into–which is what Whitehead mostly discusses in Science in the Modern World (and which then leads to his discussion of abstractive hierarchies). To say three eternal objects A, B, C, are in some relationship R(A, B, C)—as Whitehead puts it—is to say that the pattern R is characterizing how the three lower-level eternal objects are together in that one complex eternal object. If A, B, and C are not analyzable into any further such relationships, then they are sensa.
It seems far weirder to say that the complex eternal object, R(A, B, C), is necessary. That is, it seems wrong to say that A, B, and C are necessarily in such a relationship with one another (at least if we imagine that they are, say three sensa with R being a suitable geometrical relationships: surely they could be seen in other arrangements).
Nevertheless, if we want to admit R(A, B, C) as a complex eternal object in its own right, of the same categorial level as the simple patterns and sensa, then we’d have to accord them the same level of eternity—and, thus, necessity. We just have to not confuse this kind of determinacy with the kind acquired by ingression of such an eternal object in an actual occasion. None of these relationships among eternal objects per se are themselves mutually contrary, so that we couldn’t have both R(A, B, C) and Q(A, B, C), even if no actual occasion could be characterized by both. Rather, any complex of eternal objects that could possibly come together in such and such a pattern, necessarily are together in some such complex eternal object.
This all introduces a bunch of more difficult things that leaves all of this in fact rather vague, though, so that at best I’m gesturing towards something slightly legible. For one thing, the semantics suitable for interpreting the modal operators used above (or any logical symbols) for Whitehead’s philosophy is not obvious to me (for instance, it would involve ranging over variable domains as the actual world continually increases its members and thus becomes a new domain). As far as I know no solid ground has been made for any of this in interpreting Whitehead yet, and this all remains very shaky.
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Thanks for this exercise in explicitness! I have to sit with and think through much of what you’ve shared here. But as we’ve discussed back when I was writing my eternal objects article, while I see EOs as definite independent of any particular actual entity, I don’t see how they can realize any definiteness independent of actuality as such. EOs can be analyzed on their own in general (which is why metaphysics is possible), but such analysis always occurs within the (finite or, in God’s case, infinite) perspective provided by some actual entity.
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I don’t think I’d disagree that “such analysis always occurs within the (finite or, in God’s case, infinite) perspective provided by some actual entity.” You could say this is Whitehead’s subjectivist principle (which, in turn, is really also his ontological principle): any statements about objects are derivative abstractions from statements about subjects prehending objects. Esse est prehendi. So of course one major difficulty with Whitehead’s subjectivism (and something that makes his philosophy pretty fun) is being able to pair it with an appropriate objectivism so that he isn’t just a full-blown solipsist–but for Whitehead this goes not just for the objective content of our perceptions of the external world (i.e., our physical prehensions) but also our thinking (i.e., our mental pole), whose objective content then would be eternal objects (data for conceptual prehensions), propositions (data for propositional feelings), and contrasts between the external world and propositions (data for judgments). An appropriate understanding of modality seems key here: to be an object (of any category of entity) is not just to be actually felt by a subject, but to be a potential datum felt by future subjects–whatever that means (and it is not entirely clear to me).
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Footnotes2Plato 
What do you think?