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Whitehead's Philosophy: Propositions and Consciousness1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
Extract
In earlier articles I explained the fundamental entities in the Organic Philosophy, namely: actual entities or actual occasions, and eternal objects. But there is also a third type of entity called “propositions,” very important for the introduction of novelty into our world, and indispensable for “consciousness” and the higher phases of experience. Before discussing Consciousness and these higher phases, it is necessary, therefore, to give an account of propositions.
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1945
Footnotes
1
Paper read to the Jowett Society, Oxford, November 15, 1944.
References
page 59 note 2 Cf. Process and Reality, pp. 342, et seqGoogle Scholar.
page 60 note 1 The following is a brief explanation of the difference between “singular,” “general” and “universal” propositions. “A ‘singular’ proposition is the potentiality of an actual world including a definite set of actual entities in a nexus of reactions involving the hypothetical ingression of a definite set of eternal objects.
A ‘general’ proposition only differs from a ‘singular’ proposition by the generalization of ‘one definite set of actual entities,’ into ‘any set belonging to a certain sort of sets.’ If the sort of sets includes all sets with potentiality for that nexus of reactions, the proposition is called ‘universal’ (cf. P. & R., p. 262Google Scholar).
page 61 note 1 P. & R., p. 262Google Scholar.
page 61 note 2 The logical subjects are in the old sense of the word “particulars”. They are not concepts in comparison with other concepts: they are particulars in a potential pattern.
page 63 note 1 P. & R., p. 366Google Scholar.
page 64 note 1 P. & R., p. 366Google Scholar.
page 64 note 2 Ibid., p. 367.
page 65 note 1 “Hannibal” in its least abstract form, stands for a society of settled actual entities with their objectifications consciously perceived by the subject. The word “Alps” is to be explained in the same way.
page 65 note 2 P. & R., p. 368Google Scholar.
page 66 note 1 P. & R., p. 263Google Scholar.
page 67 note 1 P. & R., p. 370Google Scholar.
page 67 note 2 Ibid.
page 68 note 1 P. & R., p. 371Google Scholar.
page 68 note 2 Ibid.
page 69 note 1 P. & R., p. 371Google Scholar.
page 69 note 2 Ibid., p. 372.
page 69 note 3 Ibid., p. 372. Note: On page 357 of Process and Reality, Whitehead says: “The reversion may originate in the separate actualities of the nexus, or in the final prehending subject, or there may be a double reversion involving both sources.” It appears that perceptive feelings in which the reversion originates in the prehending subject are “unauthentic,” and that the “indirect” type of perceptive feeling, even though associated with reversion of the first kind (“originating in the separate actualities of the nexus”), is still “authentic.”
On pp. 379–381 of Process and Reality Whitehead says: “Without qualification ‘direct’ perceptive feeling feels its logical subjects as potentially invested with a predicate expressing an intrinsic character of the nexus which is the initial datum of the physical feeling.
With qualification, this statement is also true of an ‘indirect’ feeling. The qualification is that the secondary conceptual feelings entertained in the nexus by reason of reversion (cf. Categorical Condition V) have been transmuted so as to be felt in the subject (the final subject of the conscious perception) as if they had been physical facts in the nexus.…
It is important to note that even authentic physical feelings can distort the character of the nexus felt by transmuting felt concept into felt physical fact. In this way authentic perceptive feelings can introduce error into thought, and transmuted physical feelings can introduce novelty into the physical world. Such novelty may be either fortunate or disastrous. But the point is that novelty in the physical world, and error in authentic perceptive feeling, arise by conceptual functioning according to the category of reversion.”
page 69 note 4 P. & R., p. 381Google Scholar.
page 70 note 1 P. & R., p. 373Google Scholar. The term “decision” here means the phase which is the outcome of valuation, either favourable (adversion) or unfavourable (aversion). Such valuation is a type of “physical purpose” since it is the agent whereby the decision is made as to the causal efficacy of the subject of the conceptual feeling with its valuation, in its objectincations beyond itself.
page 70 note 2 Ibid., p. 373 N.B.: It should be noted that the proposition which is the datum of an imaginative feeling may be true.
page 70 note 3 Whitehead points out that there are two types of relationship between a proposition and the actual world. A proposition may be either conformal or non-conformal to the actual world, true or false. When it is conformal, the admission into feeling of the proposition “simply results in the conformation of feeling with fact.…The prehension of the proposition has merely abruptly emphasized one form of definiteness illustrated in fact.” But when a non-conformal proposition is admitted into feeling, there occurs a synthesis of fact with the alternative potentiality of the complex predicate. When this happens a novelty emerges in the creative process, and the consequences may be fortunate or disastrous. But whether they turn out to be the one or the other, at least something new has been introduced into the world. “This novelty may promote or destroy order; it may be good or bad, but it is a new type of individual, and not merely a new intensity of individual feeling.” Thus, propositions in their primary role “pave the way along which the world advances into novelty,” and error is often the price paid for this advance.
page 72 note 1 P. & R., p. 73Google Scholar.
page 73 note 1 Cf. P. & R., p. 387Google Scholar.
page 73 note 2 Ibid., pp. 225–26.
page 74 note 1 P. & R., p. 226Google Scholar.
page 74 note 2 Ibid., p. 197.
page 75 note 1 Adventures of Ideas, p. 347Google Scholar.
page 75 note 2 Process and Reality, p. 224Google Scholar.