Core Doctrine #4: “Panexperientialism with organizational duality, according to which all true individuals –as distinct from aggregational societies–have at least some iota of experience and spontaneity (self-determination).” From Griffin, “Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism” (p. 6)
Modern ontology (Cartesianism) claims there are two kinds of actual entities, purely material ones which lack any kind of primitive experience or internal relations. These are the entities of modern and post-modern science, bits of insentient “stuff” be they matter or energy (and they really all boil down to energy). The second kind of entities are immaterial “mind stuff” which account for mind and consciousness and presumably because they’re immaterial can be internally related to each other, and may even enter “into” each other. However, this part of the ontology was never developed by anyone; Descartes tried to defend it when people brought up the mind-body problem of how the two could interact, but Descartes could not articulate a sufficient answer–probably because it’s not logically possible given two distinct kinds of actual entities.
On the process ontology there is only one kind of actual entity, and it has the capability to behave as “matter” as well as “mind.” We ARE, in fact, sentient beings, so to think sentience irrationally floats in from nowhere, or manifests somehow at the animal level while it exists nowhere else in the universe, makes little sense. Rather, actual entities are drops of primitive experience, which if enough build up, and are housed in a protective environment, the experience can be detected from the outside. The old ontology requires a miracle because animal consciosuness comes out of nowhere (somehow), but on the process view, it’s inherent in the very nature of the most fundamental structures of the universe (actual entities).
This is NOT, and is very different, from Idealism, from Vitalism, etc.
Categorized in Metaphysics, Philosophy and Process Philosophy
Core Doctrine #3: “Whitehead’s nonsensationist doctrine of perception, according to which sensory perception is a secondary mode of perception, being derivative from a more fundamental, nonsensory ‘prehension’.” “Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism” (p. 5)
Unlike the sensationist doctrine of perception, Whitehead’s doctrine allows for:
—Direct perception of religious experience;
—Direct perception of moral norms;
—Direct perception of causality;
—Direct perception of the past;
—Direct perception of the external world.
Categorized in Process Philosophy
Core Doctrine #2: ”Hard-Core Commonsense Notions as the ultimate test of the adequacy of a philosophical position.” From: Griffin, David R. “Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism” (p. 5)
Hard-Core Common Sense notions are notions that are presupposed in practice by all human beings. To deny one of them violates the law of noncontradiction, because in order to act in the world we must implicitly affirm it, but because our philosophy or epistemology explicitly denies it, there’s a violation of noncontradiction. E.g., Materialistic, Sensationistic Empiricism may deny causality and/or human freedom. This shows it’s inadequate as an epistemology. HCCS is also what saves Process Philosophy from most of the relativistic nonsense that passes for philosophy today.
Categorized in Process Philosophy
Over 10 blog entries, I will set out the 10 Core Doctrines of process philosophy (of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne), as given by the process philosopher and theologian David Griffin.
Core Doctrine #1: ”The integration of moral, aesthetic, and religious intuitions with the most general doctrines of the sciences into a self-consistent worldview as one of the central tasks of philosophy in our time.” From: Griffin, David R. ”Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism” (p. 5)
Another way to say this is the integration of science and religion; to be able to put religion in a context that someone who takes science seriously may countenance, and to be able to put science in a context that someone with religious beliefs can countenance.
Categorized in David Ray Griffin, Epistemology, God, Hartshorne, Metaphysics, Phil. of Science, Philosophy, Process Philosophy, Process Theology, Science, Theology and Whitehead, A. N.
So you think you’re human? Actually, the GOAL is to BECOME human: ”If you receive the human force, if you are filled and enveloped by the human force, at the very least you will have human feelings, at the very least your way of thinking will be truly socially aware. To be socially aware means that you can
feel what someone who has nothing feels…You understand everything about human needs in this world… [Y]ou will occupy your true position as a human being.”
Mhmd. Subuh
So you think you’re human? Actually, the GOAL is to BECOME human: ”If you receive the human force, if you are filled and enveloped by the human force, at the very least you will have human feelings, at the very least your way of thinking will be truly socially aware. To be socially aware means that you can feel what someone who has nothing feels…You understand everything about human needs in this world… [Y]ou will occupy your true position as a human being.”
Mhmd. Subuh
Categorized in Direct Spiritual Training (DST) and Subud (General/Intro)
What is the nature of the human mind? Rather than saying the mind is Simply Located in the brain and gives us access to the world via the five senses, Noe argues we are immersed in a world. Segall says: ”Only contact with and access to an actual world is sufficient for conscious experience. Being conscious is something we must do, something we constantly achieve together with others and the help of the world itself.”
Click below for Matt Segall’s book review of
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Categorized in Cognitive Science, Philosophy and Science
Categorized in Democracy Now and bush
