Previously, I mentioned my long-standing enthusiasm for Whitehead, and the compelling critique of his ideas presented by Graham Harman. I must say that I am in broad agreement with much of Harman's thought, and cannot continue to identify myself as essentially Whiteheadian. However, if there is one thing I take away from Whitehead's work, and wish to preserve, it is this fundamental polarity between habit and novelty. It seems to me that these two components are the only necessary ingredients to have any kind of creativity. I think Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance is about the best theory of habit I've encountered. Novelty is a more subtle problem that I think needs a bit more unpacking.
I think Whitehead had the right idea, but ultimately I find his system a little too Platonic. Whitehead's idea is that every occasion is mediated by eternal objects(essentially Platonic forms) that are narrowed into a set of probabilities by God and selected by each actual occasion in its act of becoming. First of all, I don't like this atomistic account of becoming. I'm much more keen on Bergson's idea of duration. Second and more importantly, I have trouble believing that every form or type of experience existed in this potential realm for billions of years before there were lifeforms that were able to prehend them. Yes, I realize that Whitehead's system is panpsychist(or to use David Griffin's term, panexperientialist), and I'm very sympathetic to that idea. But there are different types of experience that different entities are capable of. Vision, for example, is a type of experience that was not available until the evolution of eyes. The qualia associated with the color red could not have predated vision, even if the part of the light spectrum we associate with red may have existed and made a difference for photons bouncing off of surfaces we would perceive as red. The kind of universal forms we experience visually are very different from the ones we encounter through auditory or tactile sensations. If these forms are indeed eternal, we'd have to believe that the universals available to sight were just sitting in the ether waiting for a creature that is able to prehend them.
What I think Whitehead is getting at, though -- and I very much agree with this -- is that creativity is archetypal. There is a sense in which creative acts of novelty are moving toward something virtual that has not yet been actualized. It is moving toward a form. In this way, final cause can be considered to be simply a broader variety of formal causation. So where do the forms come from if they aren't eternal?
I tend to think that these virtual forms evolve just as everything else does. It seems to me that this evolution occurs through tension between differences of intensity. Hegel is instructive here. The Hegelian dialectic works through a contradiction between thesis and antithesis, which produces a synthesis. However, I favor a view similar to that of Deleuze in his book Difference and Repetition, where he plays down Hegelian contradiction in favor of a Leibnizian "vice-diction." One is a philosophy of opposites or negatives, the other one of difference. This is also what separates the work of Heidegger and Sartre. Heidegger's phenomenology is one of creases and crevices, while Sartre's is one of "pools of nothingness." A dialectic of difference gives us a much richer variety of forms than one of contradiction.
So new forms evolve through a dialectic of tension between existing forms. This is where I'd bring morphic resonance into the picture. As new forms emerge, they create a virtual imprint that has causal efficacy on the actual world by influencing how that form is actualized with each repetition. Sheldrake describes how morphic fields influence one another through self-similarity. But can an entity be influenced by a form that is radically different than itself? Sheldrake does not really touch on this question. However, Deleuze seems to offer something along these lines with his notion of the "body without organs." The body without organs, or BwO, is a virtual dimension of a body with a phase space of potentials that can become activated through interactions with other bodies, producing states of becoming.
The BwO can almost be thought of as the opposite of a morphic field, since one is conservative and the other is creative. However, I would suggest that the two are one and the same field performing different functions. Whitehead described God as having two natures: the primordial nature and the consequent nature, with the former producing novelty and the latter preserving the past. With this unified field, we see this dual function existing in every actual form.
So does this mean we should discard God from this metaphysical system? I don't blame those who would readily do so, but as a spiritual person I prehend a certain telos in the world which makes me believe there is something more transcendent at work. When I think of God, I imagine a kind of beacon of light that beckons creation forward toward new possibilities. I am quite drawn toward Whitehead's vision of a God who not only influences the world but is also influenced by it. If there is anything in Whitehead's system worth saving, I think it is his theology.
So where can such a God fit in without these messy notions of eternal objects or actual occasions? Well, we already have the virtual realm. These fields I speak of -- the combined morphic field and BwO -- exert causal influence non-locally because they have a virtual existence apart from any actual instances. Thus, the creativity of which they partake is both transcendent and immanent. This is starting to sound a lot like God. God, then, is both transcendent from any particular form and immanent in every form. This would seem to offer a more mystical theology than Whitehead, as it more fully expresses Christ's declaration that "the kingdom of God is within you."
I think Whitehead had the right idea, but ultimately I find his system a little too Platonic. Whitehead's idea is that every occasion is mediated by eternal objects(essentially Platonic forms) that are narrowed into a set of probabilities by God and selected by each actual occasion in its act of becoming. First of all, I don't like this atomistic account of becoming. I'm much more keen on Bergson's idea of duration. Second and more importantly, I have trouble believing that every form or type of experience existed in this potential realm for billions of years before there were lifeforms that were able to prehend them. Yes, I realize that Whitehead's system is panpsychist(or to use David Griffin's term, panexperientialist), and I'm very sympathetic to that idea. But there are different types of experience that different entities are capable of. Vision, for example, is a type of experience that was not available until the evolution of eyes. The qualia associated with the color red could not have predated vision, even if the part of the light spectrum we associate with red may have existed and made a difference for photons bouncing off of surfaces we would perceive as red. The kind of universal forms we experience visually are very different from the ones we encounter through auditory or tactile sensations. If these forms are indeed eternal, we'd have to believe that the universals available to sight were just sitting in the ether waiting for a creature that is able to prehend them.
What I think Whitehead is getting at, though -- and I very much agree with this -- is that creativity is archetypal. There is a sense in which creative acts of novelty are moving toward something virtual that has not yet been actualized. It is moving toward a form. In this way, final cause can be considered to be simply a broader variety of formal causation. So where do the forms come from if they aren't eternal?
I tend to think that these virtual forms evolve just as everything else does. It seems to me that this evolution occurs through tension between differences of intensity. Hegel is instructive here. The Hegelian dialectic works through a contradiction between thesis and antithesis, which produces a synthesis. However, I favor a view similar to that of Deleuze in his book Difference and Repetition, where he plays down Hegelian contradiction in favor of a Leibnizian "vice-diction." One is a philosophy of opposites or negatives, the other one of difference. This is also what separates the work of Heidegger and Sartre. Heidegger's phenomenology is one of creases and crevices, while Sartre's is one of "pools of nothingness." A dialectic of difference gives us a much richer variety of forms than one of contradiction.
So new forms evolve through a dialectic of tension between existing forms. This is where I'd bring morphic resonance into the picture. As new forms emerge, they create a virtual imprint that has causal efficacy on the actual world by influencing how that form is actualized with each repetition. Sheldrake describes how morphic fields influence one another through self-similarity. But can an entity be influenced by a form that is radically different than itself? Sheldrake does not really touch on this question. However, Deleuze seems to offer something along these lines with his notion of the "body without organs." The body without organs, or BwO, is a virtual dimension of a body with a phase space of potentials that can become activated through interactions with other bodies, producing states of becoming.
The BwO can almost be thought of as the opposite of a morphic field, since one is conservative and the other is creative. However, I would suggest that the two are one and the same field performing different functions. Whitehead described God as having two natures: the primordial nature and the consequent nature, with the former producing novelty and the latter preserving the past. With this unified field, we see this dual function existing in every actual form.
So does this mean we should discard God from this metaphysical system? I don't blame those who would readily do so, but as a spiritual person I prehend a certain telos in the world which makes me believe there is something more transcendent at work. When I think of God, I imagine a kind of beacon of light that beckons creation forward toward new possibilities. I am quite drawn toward Whitehead's vision of a God who not only influences the world but is also influenced by it. If there is anything in Whitehead's system worth saving, I think it is his theology.
So where can such a God fit in without these messy notions of eternal objects or actual occasions? Well, we already have the virtual realm. These fields I speak of -- the combined morphic field and BwO -- exert causal influence non-locally because they have a virtual existence apart from any actual instances. Thus, the creativity of which they partake is both transcendent and immanent. This is starting to sound a lot like God. God, then, is both transcendent from any particular form and immanent in every form. This would seem to offer a more mystical theology than Whitehead, as it more fully expresses Christ's declaration that "the kingdom of God is within you."
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