Process relational philosophy: An introduction to Alfred North Whitehead, by C. Robert Mesle (Alan’s notes, Sept. 2024)

Page three: ideas shape actions so it matters how we think about reality, the world and ourselves

Page three: Three reasons why you might want to learn more about process relational thought: One, the first is simply wonder, the philosopher’s joy in wondering about this incredible amazing world; Second, thinking of the world as deeply interwoven, as an ever-renewing relational process, can change the way we feel and act; Finally, we need a coherent vision of our world, something that can engage people from many different scientific, cultural, philosophical and religious perspectives

Page eight: Indeed, as Heraclitus’ student, Cratylus, argued, you can’t even step in the same river once. The river changes even as we step into it, and so do we. Some things change very slowly, but all things change. Or to put it better, the world is not finally made of “things”, at all, if a “thing” is something that exists over time and without changing. The world is composed of events and processes. Process philosophers claim that these features of relatedness and process are not mere surface appearance. They go all the way down to the roots of reality. Moreover, process thinkers insist that our failure to recognize that reality is a relational process is a source of great harms. It matters how we think about reality, the world, and ourselves because we act on what we think.

Page 15: We are faced with a vast, complex world in which we encounter a wide range of interconnected problems. The better our ideas are at helping us to see how the world and those problems are interconnected, the more successfully we can work to solve our problems [This is what I mean when I talk about the importance of alignment].

Page 23: Because this is a beginning introduction, I will stick to more familiar language like, mind, self, and soul, and will work hard to remind you to think of these words in new ways. Whitehead placed great emphasis on emotion. For that reason, I will often speak of experience and feeling because they are general by definition and because they tend not to focus attention on our rational dimensions. We usually speak of feeling both physical sensations and emotions and almost never speak of feeling ourselves reasoning

Page 35: If it is true that our mind, soul, psyche is completely natural, then the question is, how does our experience arise out of the physical world? Whitehead’s answer is that feeling, in a strangely but appropriately stretched meaning, goes all the way down

Page 36: Imagine that experience, feeling, emotion goes all the way down to subatomic particles. Imagine that electrons, protons, neutrons, and other subatomic, quote, particles are drops of spatio-temporal experience. They experience their physical relationships with the world around them as vectored emotions, feelings that drive them this way and that. Think of energy as the transmission of physical feelings.

[Here’s the idea of e-motions, as in emotions]

Page 38: Consciousness is only a tiny but brilliant flicker in the sea of experience that constitutes this world

Page 38: Rocks don’t have experience as rocks because they aren’t organized that way. Complex animal bodies like yours are organized precisely to channel experience and organize it into a single individual who is able to achieve awareness and direct the whole organism away from harm and toward food, etc. This individual experiencer which draws together the vast wealth of experience of the cells composing your body is your mind.

Page 39: The world is composed of an infinite number of individual drops of feeling, all woven together by their experiences of each other

Page 39: This psyche draws experience from the whole body, brackets, with varying degrees of directness and clarity, brackets, often crossing a threshold into some degree of consciousness, and is able in turn to use that awareness to direct the organism towards actions that help it to survive and achieve some enjoyment of life

Page 41: It is obvious that process relational thinkers lean toward the vision of John Stuart Mill, the 19th century philosopher who insisted that actions are right or wrong, not because of some abstract duty, but because they have consequences for people’s lives. Actions are right as they tend to make life better and wrong as they tend to make life worse. [The same with governance. It’s good or bad, not because of how it’s assessed normatively, but because of the consequences it has for people’s lives]

Page 41: Understanding ourselves and the world as composed of experience will open the door to a much clearer and deeper vision of our own interwovenness with each other, with nature, with all of reality.

Page 43: What is it like to be you experiencing this becoming and perishing of moments? I have said that you remember the past, at least some of it, I would go further and ask if you do not also feel yourself arising out of your past. In the larger picture, you can see your present self as the product of all of your life experiences and decisions. But more pressingly, do you not feel yourself as arising out of your immediate past, out of your experience of just a moment ago? If you stub your toe, don’t you feel your reaction arising out of the experience of the pain? If a friend hugs you, don’t you feel your emotions arising out of the experience of the hug and all the relationship that went before? If someone treats you unfairly, don’t you feel your emotional reaction arise out of that treatment?

Page 46: Whitehead quotes John Stuart Mill’s remark that such thinkers like Descartes “thought that by determining the meaning of words, they could become acquainted with facts”. Further reflection will show that the world is far more complex.

Page 48: You are the flow of your experience [Daoism/Taoism]. Your mind, your soul, your psyche is that flow.

Page 50: Process philosophers recognize the importance of the language of being, but find deeper wisdom and greater clarity in a vision of the world as becoming, as relational process

Page 53: Two people who join in marriage will be creating themselves out of each other and out of their relationship. Each word, each glance, each touch, each kiss, each shared moment, each thought about each other. Everything they do will become part of the material out of which they will create themselves. They will gradually discover that they have literally become parts of each other, parts of each other’s souls. They should have a special care then, how they treat each other – have a care what material they each give to the other for the creation of their souls

Page 59: Amoebas experience their environment and respond to it. So do we. The world is a vast web of causal relationships, relational processes.

Page 71: If we are not to say that love is inherently powerless, we need a new vision of power, a relational vision.

Page 72: It seems clear that it is precisely the power to be affected that increases as we move up the chain of complexity from mere electrons to molecules to microorganisms to plants and animals to vertebrates with brains and central nervous systems and finally brackets so far as we know yet brackets to human beings. It is not our power to remain unaffected or even the power to control others that makes our lives richer and more valuable. It is our amazing capacity to be affected by the incredible richness and complexity of the relational web in which we live.

Page 73: In my own formulation, relational power includes three components. One, the ability to be actively open to and affected by the world around us. Two, the ability to create ourselves out of what we have taken in. And three, the ability to influence those around us by having first been affected by them.

Page 73: There is a crucial life-shaping difference between the kind of weakness that makes us vulnerable to being controlled by others and the italics strength that enables us to be active and open to the world around us. There is an equally vital difference between the power to control others while shutting them out of our lives and the power to engage the lives of others in ways that enrich us all. [This is about the vulnerability of power]

Page 77: Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his doctoral dissertation on a process theologian, Henry Nelson Wienan, who explicitly articulated a relational approach to life and creative transformation

Page 77: A relational vision of reality may assist us in articulating more clearly and effectively a relational vision of power, in which power and love are two faces of the same strength, enriching all our lives [This is Kahane, Power and Love. It also relates to my thinking about the political economy of love, loving systems, and loving governance. And Tamkeen]

Page 82: We can never escape these constraints. The past is done and can never be changed and we create ourselves out of that past. Sometimes the options open to us seem trivial and sometimes they may all seem bad, but we never find ourselves truly with only one option. We must always decide whether we want to or not. Sometimes we love freedom, sometimes we hate it, but we can never escape it.

[This is like Viktor Frankl, and choosing what to do in the circumstances that you find yourself in: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”]

Page 89: Rosemont and Ames interpret the Tao, the way, brackets, in equally process relational terms. The way is defined as treading. As the Zhuangzi says, "the way is made in the walking of it"

David Ray Griffin, who I think wrote the new pearl harbour book about 9/11, also wrote Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality

He also wrote, edited, Founders of Constructive Postmodern Philosophy

Pierce, James, Bergson, Whitehead and Hartshorne.