Eternal Objects Research Articles

FERRÉ AND THE PROBLEM OF TEMPORAL LOCATION

The Southern Journal of PhilosophyVolume 20, Issue 1 p. 133-137 FERRÉ AND THE PROBLEM OF TEMPORAL LOCATION Villard Alan White, Villard Alan White University of Wisconsin Center-Manitowoc County Villard Alan White received the Ph. D. in fall, 1981, from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He has published previously in Process Studies, and is currently working on papers concerning Whitehead's doctrine of eternal objects and his theory of time. At present he is an Assistant Professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin Center-Manitowoc County, Manitowoc, Wisconsin.Search for more papers by this author Villard Alan White, Villard Alan White University of Wisconsin Center-Manitowoc County Villard Alan White received the Ph. D. in fall, 1981, from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He has published previously in Process Studies, and is currently working on papers concerning Whitehead's doctrine of eternal objects and his theory of time. At present he is an Assistant Professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin Center-Manitowoc County, Manitowoc, Wisconsin.Search for more papers by this author First published: Spring 1982 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-6962.1982.tb00283.x Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume20, Issue1Spring 1982Pages 133-137 RelatedInformation

Logik zwischen Scholastik und Humanismus: Das Kornmentarwerk Johann Ecks (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 249 Arno Seifert. Logik zwischen Scholastik und Humanismus: Das Kornmentarwerk Johann Ecks. Humanistische Bibliothek, vol. 31. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1978. Pp. 184. DM 36.00. The first two decades of the sixteenth century saw the last flowering of medieval logic outside Spain. The main center was the University of Paris, where a talented group of Scotsmen, Spaniards and others wrote original treatises on such topics as terms, insolubles and obligations, as well as producing commentaries on Peter of Spain and Aristotle. However, a certain amount of logical writing was still done in Germany, particularly by Jodocus Trutvetter (d. 1519) whose works included Summule totius logice (1501), and by the subject of this book, Johann Eck (1486-1543), whose main logical works were his commentaries on Peter of Spain (1516) and Aristotle (1516-17). Neither of these men seems to have been original, but each of them had an encyclopedic knowledge of earlier writers, and an admirable clarity of exposition. Another feature of their work which makes them peculiarly valuable to the historian of logic is their habit of giving fairly detailed references to the authors they were discussing, this at a time when it was still usual to attribute views to "a certain doctor" or "some recent logicians." Johann Eck was also a figure of great interest apart from his logical works. He was a talented humanist who knew Greek and Hebrew, an experienced university lecturer, a best-selling theologian, a devoted pastor who is said to have delivered 436 sermons in a six-month period, and a famous polemicist who came to grips with Luther, Zwingli, and Melanchthon. It was therefore with high expectations that I approached Seifert's work on Eck, hoping to find his logical work placed in a perspective which would illuminate both the period and the man. Unfortunately it turns out that the book's title is highly misleading, since the book tells us very little about Eck himself and very little about logic in the second decade of the sixteenth century. This is partly because the text is so short: a mere ninetyeight pages, followed by seventy-two pages of footnotes. Moreover, the last part of the book is devoted to an excursus on the concept of dialectic in the middle ages which, although valuable in its own right, has only a loose connection with the rest of the book. The most significant contribution Seifert has to make to our knowledge of the period is his detailed account of the Arts Faculty at Ingolstadt, how it came to commission Eck to write the commentaries on Peter of Spain and Artistotle, and what happened to them once they were published. For instance, in 1516 one Michael Hutter was sent to the universities of Freiburg and Tibingen to persuade them to adopt Eck's commentary on Peter of Spain, and later 200 copies of the work were sent there. It is this kind of detail which helps us to understand the circumstances in which men like Eck were working. Seifert also gives a useful, though hardly new, account of the various logic texts that were available in the early sixteenth century, and a useful summary of the various intellectual trends of the time. However, while Seifert is clearly a good historian, his grasp of logic itself seems to be minimal. For instance, on page 63 he mentions in passing that Eck adopted Ockham's view whereby spoken words signified things rather than concepts without attempting to tell us why this was a matter of debate, or what the issues were, and without noting that in the passage cited Eck was explicitly following Duns Scotus as well as Ockham. In the same paragraph Seifert mentions Eck's rejection of Peter of Aily's view that mental sentences signify truly or falsely whereas spoken sentences signify the true and the false without explaining what the dispute was about, or how it related to Gregory of Rimini's introduction of the complexe significabile as an eternal object named by occurrent sentences . Another example is Seifert's account of supposition on pages 50-51 where he lists 250 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY some of the views held by Eck...

Creativity as Eternal Object in Whitehead

Creativity as Eternal Object in Whitehead

Whitehead’s Doctrine of Eternal Objects and Its Interpretations

Whitehead’s Doctrine of Eternal Objects and Its Interpretations

Can whether one proposition makes sense depend on the truth of another? (Tractatus 2.0211—2)

Wittgenstein's Tractatus contains a wide range of profound insights into the nature of logic and language – insights which will survive the particular theories of the Tractatus and seem to me to mark definitive and unassailable landmarks in our understanding of some of the deepest questions of philosophy. And yet alongside these insights there is a theory of the nature of the relation between language and reality which appears both to be impossible to work out in detail in a way which is completely satisfactory, and to be bizarre and incredible. I am referring to the so-called logical atomism of the Tractatus. The main outlines of this theory at least are clear and familiar: there are elementary propositions which gain their sense from being models of possible states of affairs; such propositions are configurations of names of simple objects, signifying that those simples are analogously configured; every proposition has its sense through being analysable as a truth-functional compound of elementary propositions, thus deriving its sense from the sense of the elementary propositions when this view is taken in conjunction with the idea that the sense of a proposition is completely specified by specifying its truth-conditions. In this way the Tractatus incorporates in its working out a philosophical system analogous to the classical philosophical systems of Leibniz or Spinoza which are regarded by many people, in a sense rightly, as the prehistoric monsters of philosophy which are not to be studied as living organisms, but studied as the curiosities of human thought. And we may here agree that in the end we must simply reject a philosophy which incorporates such features as its postulation of simple eternal objects, or of a possibility of an analysis of a proposition which was presented as a pre-condition for the propositions that we ordinarily utter to make sense, and yet the specific form of which we are unaware of, and so on.

Can whether one proposition makes sense depend on the truth of another? (Tractatus 2.0211—2)

Wittgenstein's Tractatus contains a wide range of profound insights into the nature of logic and language – insights which will survive the particular theories of the Tractatus and seem to me to mark definitive and unassailable landmarks in our understanding of some of the deepest questions of philosophy. And yet alongside these insights there is a theory of the nature of the relation between language and reality which appears both to be impossible to work out in detail in a way which is completely satisfactory, and to be bizarre and incredible. I am referring to the so-called logical atomism of the Tractatus. The main outlines of this theory at least are clear and familiar: there are elementary propositions which gain their sense from being models of possible states of affairs; such propositions are configurations of names of simple objects, signifying that those simples are analogously configured; every proposition has its sense through being analysable as a truth-functional compound of elementary propositions, thus deriving its sense from the sense of the elementary propositions when this view is taken in conjunction with the idea that the sense of a proposition is completely specified by specifying its truth-conditions. In this way the Tractatus incorporates in its working out a philosophical system analogous to the classical philosophical systems of Leibniz or Spinoza which are regarded by many people, in a sense rightly, as the prehistoric monsters of philosophy which are not to be studied as living organisms, but studied as the curiosities of human thought. And we may here agree that in the end we must simply reject a philosophy which incorporates such features as its postulation of simple eternal objects, or of a possibility of an analysis of a proposition which was presented as a pre-condition for the propositions that we ordinarily utter to make sense, and yet the specific form of which we are unaware of, and so on.

The Relatedness of Eternal Objects in Whitehead’s "Process and Reality"

Research Article| July 01 1971 The Relatedness of Eternal Objects in Whitehead’s "Process and Reality" John W. Lango John W. Lango Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Process Studies (1971) 1 (2): 124–128. https://doi.org/10.2307/44797278 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation John W. Lango; The Relatedness of Eternal Objects in Whitehead’s "Process and Reality". Process Studies 1 January 1971; 1 (2): 124–128. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/44797278 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressProcess Studies Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © Copyright 1976 Process Studies1976 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The Relatedness of Eternal Objects in Whitehead’s Process and Reality

The Relatedness of Eternal Objects in Whitehead’s Process and Reality

Whitehead's Metaphysics: A Critical Examination (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 99 Whitehead's Metaphysics: A Critical Examination. By Edward Pols. (Carbondale: Southern 111. Univ. Press, 1967. Pp. v-ix+195. $6.50) Edward Pols's book is a worthy addition to Whitehead scholarship despite my disagreement with his interpretation of crucial parts of Process and Reality. It was a delight to me to dip into his book and find myself carried beyond Whitehead into a penetrating analysis of the concept of freedom ingredient in Process and Reality. In this respect, the title of the book is a little misleading, since Pols's critical examination concerns Whitehead's concept of freedom . He ferrets this out of the text with great care, which leads him into some of the crucial doctrines of Process and Reality. He reads Whitehead with sympathy and understanding , and students will benefit from his analysis. The basic question of the analysis is to what degree Whitehead's metaphysics allows a genuine place to freedom. Clearly Whitehead intended to do so. Some of the crucial passages bearing on this question are: Categorical Obligation IX, which asserts, "the concrescence of each individual actual entity is internally determined and is externally free" (PR 41); "whatever is determinable is determined, but that there is always a remainder for the decision of the subject-superject of that concrescence" (PR 41); and "however far the sphere of efficient causation be pushed in the determination of components of a concrescence.., beyond the deterruination of these components, there always remains the final reaction of the self-creative unity of the universe" (PR 75). Pols quite properly, in dealing with this question, gives a wider sense to freedom, what he calls the "factor of freedom," including: "a) indetermination; b) as a correlate of indetermination, novelty, which, reflecting perhaps an optimistic bias, is sometimes identified with creative advance; c) self-causation (or self-creation) in the sense of an aim at a certain 'subjective intensity' of feeling" (p. 21). It is important, I think, at the outset to remind ourselves that creativity, novelty indetermination, origination, and chance need not be the same as freedom. It is a common error to slip from one to the other, and some metaphysical systems depend on moving from one to the other. I believe that Whitehead's Category of Creativity includes freedom in his special sense, but we could have novel creative origination without freedom. Freedom is almost too vague or ambiguous to be of much use to a metaphysician, and Whitehead wisely avoids its frequent use. Pols argues that Whitehead cannot give a proper place to freedom in his system. First, the internal constitution of an actual entity is not free because it is determined by the subjective aim of that actual entity and the subjective aim is derived from a hybrid physical feeling of God's primordial nature, a feeling that occurs in the initial phase of concrescence. Second, the phases of concrescence of an actual entity generate an incompatibility between the hybrid physical feeling of God, providing the subjective aim in the initial phase and the subjective aim as a feeling of a proposition, which could only occur in a late phase of concrescence. Third, also stemming from the phases of concrescence, the internal selfcausation of an actual entity, which brings about modification of the subjective aim, is the result of determinate components or of creativity. But creativity contributes no active power, according to Pols, and the internal constitution of an actual entity is completely governed by a network of internal relations among eternal objects playing various roles, leaving no room for the decision of subject-superject in its final creative reaction which closes concrescence. Fifth, eternal objects are the ultimate ontological elements in Whitehead's system despite Whitehead's repeated claim that actual entities are fundamental (pp. 98-99, 141-142, 157-158, 193-195). Weaving in and out of the entire fabric of Process and Reality, Pols carefully collects his passages to give the evidence for these criticisms. The marshalling of evidence is carried out with due caution, always allowing for subtle differences of meaning, indicating a close reading of the text. This analysis makes the book worth reading regardiess of whether one agrees with...

THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF VALUES AND CONTEMPORARY CIVILIZATION

PHILOSOPHERS tell us that there have been four main approaches to the problem of value: the Platonic view that values are eternal objects; the position of subjectivism or of radical ethical relativity; the assumption held in common by certain Marxists, logical positivists, and linguistic philosophers that judgments of value are merely emotional or verbal assertions altogether removed from the categories of truth and falsity; the naturalistic approach which holds that values are accessible to the same methods of enquiry and canons of validity applied to all forms of empirical knowledge. last view oriented the work of the Values Project of the Laboratory of Social Relations of Harvard University. Behavioral science may as well resign itself to shallow descriptivism unless it can create the concepts and the methods and techniques required for dealing with statements of value and with non-verbal acts influenced bv such abstract standards. Otherwise explanation and prediction will be impossible except at the levels of reflexive behavior, reactions under conditions of extreme physiological stress, and sheer statistical conformance to cultural patterns. For human beings do not respond to stimuli or to a stimulus-field as machines respond to the pressing of a lever. In addition to the human organism and its environment (including other people), there is a third factor, an intervening variable which is not directly observable but is ever present. is the total apperceptive mass which each of us develops both as a result of our strictly personal experiences and by virtue of our participation in a specific society and in particular sub-groups of that society. Only exceptionally do we react in any literal sense to stimuli as they might be correctly described in physical and physiological terms. Rather, we react to our interpretations of stimuli. These interpretations are derived in considerable part from our culture and from each person's specific experiences in that culture. Human beings, like other animals, try to maintain their lives, to survive in the struggle for existence. But the human animal complicates his efforts to survive by the use of ideas and symbols. Always and everywhere men say This is good and That is bad. This is better and that is worse. This is to be sought and that avoided. This is preferable to that. Such evaluation is not restricted to what is deemed beneficial or injurious in terms of survival and adjustment. All cultures have their categorical imperatives that go beyond existence and pleasure. Few of us as individuals are content with the mere continuation of physical existence. As Simone de Beauvoir says:

The essence of universals

Since it is evident that discourse cannot be formed by means of a vocab ulary of proper-names only, the theory of the other constituents of language which includes the theory of universals, is connected with the classification of any vocabulary and with the description of different classes of words as to their significations. Many words are modifications of nouns and verbs, but they occur in a changed form as nouns and verbs too. Most words denote features of actual entities but not actual entities as do proper-names. Further we need for the completion of dis course the so-called logical vocabulary of any language which contains connectives or 'basic articles such as 'is', 'not', 'and', 'or', 'unless', 'if, 'than', 'neither', 'nor', 'some', 'all' '!). Plato in his Theory of Ideas postulated for the meaning of some con stituents of language reality the only kind of reality in the universe and if we begin with the doctrines of Greek Thinkers we may write History of Philosophy in terms of the discussion of the meaning of those constituents of language, which do not suffice, if used as single words, to denote actual entities. The discussion is not finished until to-day, and modern Philosophers think sometimes to conclude it by the remark that all differences of opinion may be reducible to differences in the definition of the concept 'universal' which is arbitrary in principle 2). Against Plato's opinion it may be pointed out that he has not seen that the universe which is the object of his theory is a universe of discourse only. His ideas are in fact transitory phenomena because human discourse is a transitory phenomenon created by man and a function of his mind. The so-called ideas are terms of human discourse and abstract in so far as they were undefined as to position in time and space, but not 'eternal objects', as Platonists maintain. If we speak on Universals, it must be noted, that the word 'universal' is

Eternal Objects, Attributes, and Relations in Whitehead's Philosophy

Eternal Objects, Attributes, and Relations in Whitehead's Philosophy

Eternal Objects and the Philosophy of Organism

In what follows our purpose is to make clear the reasons which lie back of Whitehead's appeal to eternal objects in his explanation of the emergence of actual entities and to show that so long as one operates within his scheme of ideas no other consistent explanation is available. A thoroughgoing reconstruction of the scheme is necessary if this presupposition is to be eliminated. If the project is successful, it will be demonstrated that the theory of actual entities provides no basis for the explanation of the emergence of novel things, which is one of the major tenets of the organic philosophy. The argument will develop by way of an analysis of the theory of “physical relatedness.”

Whitehead's Philosophy: Propositions and Consciousness

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.

Whitehead's Philosophy: Space, Time and Things

In earlier articles an account has been given of some of the chief notions in the Organic Philosophy, namely Creativity, Actual Entities, Eternal Objects, God. In the present article the writer will endeavour to present Whitehead's doctrine concerning the space-time continuum and the nature of enduring objects implicated therein.

The Unity in the Universe, According to Alfred N. Whitehead

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORS: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS oF THE PROVINCE oF ST. JosEPH Publishers: Sheed and Ward, Inc., New York City VoL. VI JULY, 1943 THE UNITY IN THE UNIVERSE, ACCORDING TO ALFRED N. WHITEHEAD INTRODUCTION No. 2 PROFESSOR Whitehead has made a large contribution to the field of modern philosophy in the several works which he has published. In the series of books which have appeared, he preserves the general outline of his theories, although he makes certain changes in the detailed explanations. In his latest work, Modes of Thought, one may note a further transition in his doctrine, still within the general trend of his earlier thought. For the purpose of this study the most systematic presentation of his cosmology may be found in Process and Reality. It is easily understood that, while he is presented as a philosopher in the general sense of that term, he has come to philosophy by way of mathematics and mathematical physics. Hence, he is especially interested in the cosmological rather than ontological aspects of philosophy. At the same time, his philosophy is organic, founded on principles which pertain as much to biology and psychology as to cosmology. His doctrine of prehension or prehensive experience as it is 135 186 EDWAIID J" LINTZ presented in Process and Reality is an extension of a fact which is verified concerning living things, to the inorganic world" First of aU, the world must be conceived as composed of monadic actual entities" Each entity becomes-it never is-and it is nothing but the process of its own becoming" This process of becoming resolves itself into the ingression of eternal objects which constitute the potentialities of definiteness any actual existence. Not only do eternal objects enter into the composition , but other actual entities may be prehensively gathered into the unity of one new entity. The eternal objects are similar to universals or Platonic forms, and have an eocistence separate from that which they possess when they are a part of the constitution of an actual entity" A rather disconcerting example of eternal object is a definite shade of green. Mr. Whitehead does not employ the term " greenness " but we may assume that the term is not alien to his idea an eternal object. In this manner of ingression or " participation," the eternal objects are the source of the temporal actual entities of which the actual world is formed. The part of "creativity" in the system is not very clear. It will be treated more fully in the section on creation. For the present, we may say that it is used at times as a synonym for the word " creation " considered as the act of creating; at other times it is that which results from the act of creation, the created world. At all events it is to be conceived as an element to be found throughout the world. All existing things, including God, are characterizations of The two groups, actual entities and eternal objects, are mediated by a thing which combines the two. The mediating element is the divine element in the world, " by which the barren inefficient disposition of abstract potentialities or eternal objects obtains primordially the efficient conjunction of ordering ." This ordering is said to be the "ideal realization" of all eternal objects. "The ideal realization of potentialities in the primordial nature of God constitutes the stability by which the actual process exemplifies general principles of metaphysics and attains the ends proper to specific types of emergent order"" THE UNITY IN THE UNIVERSE 187 By reason of the actuality of the primordial valuation, or ordering, or realization, of eternal objects, each eternal object has a definite, effective relevance to· each concrescent process. The ordering amounts to a plan which is realized only approximately in the concrescent process which constitutes a given actual entity. The concrescing entities enjoy a certain amount of freedom in the process, and therefore the primordial aim is attained only more or less. The process does not cease at the completion of a given actual entity. It begins with data, eternal objects, actual entities or both. These data are prehended by the actual entity...

Whitehead's Philosophy: Eternal Objects and God.

The Universe cannot be exhaustively analysed if we stop at actual entities or even societies of actual entities which, as we shall see later when we discuss the notion of ‘nexus,’ are equivalent to what we ordinarily mean by enduring objects such as a stone, a tree, or a man. There is another class of entities which plays an important part in the constitution of the Universe called ‘eternal objects,’ and we must now proceed to an understanding of these.

On the Postulates of Empiricism

In undertaking a discussion of the postulates of empiricism, I am confronted by the necessity of being empirical concerning the very postulates themselves. Were those postulates directly accessible to the average mind it would hardly be necessary to enter upon an analysis the success of which seems but a remote possibility even to one who has spent years in the effort to trace the priceless ingredient of the method of experiment in the cheap madness of scientific success. How these postulates reveal themselves to more than the average mind would, of course, be very difficult for me to surmise, except by an ambitious extrapolation. It would have to be an extrapolation of the kind which telescopes a multitude of small rational steps into one swift unerring instinctive flight to the goal of goals. Yet, though genius with one intuitive glance may perceive the postulates as revelation—why not grant that there may be seers who can contemplate eternal objects unblinkingly?—it would still have to descend to mundane means to inform the average mind of its transcendental perceptions. Must not everyone indeed attend to the demands of the average mind?

Meaning as Behavior

Meanings have an empirical genesis and status. This simple claim has often been denied or ignored. Some metaphysicians in their exaltation of the eternal have regarded meanings as essences, or eternal objects, or neutral entities, in a subsistential or supernatural realm that is changeless and has no roots in nature. Some logicians in their zest to manipulate meanings isolate them so completely as forms of reason, or as syntactical symbols that at no point is their connection with natural events made intelligible. Yet meanings, all meanings, have relation to mind. It is this empirical, psychological aspect of meaning that I shall analyze. The larger philosophic question as to what the relation of the psychological aspect is to the metaphysical or the logical will not concern us except indirectly.

Colour

Wheneverwe read any philosophical work dealing with the nature of qualities, the status of universals, or similar problems, we find continual references to colour; redness and blueness meet us on every page. Even Whitehead, whose obscurity is, at least in part, due to his avoidance of particular instances, condescends to cite colours as examples of “eternal objects” and other cases will occur at once to every reader.