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 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?
