[MD] Sneddon Thesis

[Ham Priday]

Hi Platt, Ant, Ian, Dan, Laramie, et al --


I'm not acquainted with Sneddon, but I see Ian has provided an impressive
bibliography.  I've read his thesis on Whitehead [thanks, Ant], and find it
revealing on several counts.  Most interesting to me is Whitehead's
interpretation of Reality, which I see as a major stumbling block in his
cosmology.

Platt pulled out a number of phrases from the quoted sections of "Process
and Reality", adding a significant comment.

[Platt]:
>  -- a stimulus which our environment puts upon us
>  -- a stimulus upon nature as a whole
>  -- a stimulus to change
>  -- the feeling that drives upwards
>  -- an upward urge
>  -- the present moment responds only to a feeling
>  -- forward, upward urge of evolution
>
> This is new descriptive vocabulary to me. It suggests the
> existence of an undefined, undifferentiated, omnipresent
> force or energy in the universe that we humans recognize
> by an emotional response.

Yes, and this "undefined force" can easily be identified as Value.  Except
that Whitehead was persuaded to relate Value to the finite, experienced
world.  He apparently could not view it as human sensibility to the absolute
source.

For Whitehead, as with other positivists, the terms "potentiality" and
"possibility" are practically interchangeable.  By defining process as the
"essence of reality", Whitehead is tempted to posit the source of reality as
the perfect fusion of its actualized possibilities.  Thus, if God's
"primordial nature" is full potentiality, the number of "actualities" that
God can create is infinite.  "The notion of one perfection of order, which
is (I believe) Plato's doctrine, must go the way of the one possible
geometry," he says.  "The universe is more various, more Hegelian."  Such a
concept is, I think, laden with logical inconsistencies.

The perennial problem begins when the philosopher defines reality as the
experienced world evolving in time and space.  Transitional, differentiated
reality is the only reality we know.  We cannot experience the essence of
reality, nor can a "universe of variety" qualify as the "unified reality"
that Whitehead reminds us is his metaphysical goal.  "The term 'real' refers
to the creative activity," he insists; but activity cannot be unified, even
if the activity takes place within a unified system.  The primary source of
activity and difference must itself be immutable and undifferentiated.  This
suggests an absolute essence beyond the conditions of time and process which
characterize the actualized world.

There is a moral paradigm that has been suggested throughout philosophical
history but has never been achieved epistemologically.  Whitehead expressed
it in qualifying his observation that permanence and change are the "two
sides" of reality: "The key to metaphysics is this doctrine of mutual
immanence, each side lending to the other a factor necessary for its
reality."  But Whitehead's mistake was equating the two sides.  As Professor
Sneddon points out, "For Whitehead, process is reality: '.the term 'real'
refers to the creative activity'.  Process and Reality could have been
titled Process IS Reality."  By equating the two, Whitehead precludes the
possibility of mutual immanence, of reciprocity between the modes of flux
and permanence.

If, as he says, "the subjective aim of an occasion is the proposing of a
form of value for itself," and that "...this is the germ of those theories
of valuation that suggest that value is the result of a want, or
deficiency," then Value is the "immanent" factor he is looking for.  But
Value can only arise as the perspective of a cognizance set apart from the
permanent source.  That is to say, if the absolute source was to create
something -- the appearance of an "other" -- it would have to be an
"exclusion" of itself, rather than a new creation.  Whitehead himself says:
"In its essence, realization is limitation, exclusion."  If this is true,
then the "actualized" side of reality that we realize valuistically and
cognize as "process" is not a "real other" but only an abstraction of
essential reality.

How, then, is this objectivized abstraction derived?  In metaphysical terms,
an exclusion is a denial or "negation" of the potential source that results
in creating Difference.  If we identify the potential source as the absolute
and immutable Essence and allow that its potentiality is negational, we can
construct a cosmology that resolves Whitehead's dilemma while at the same
time achieving the paradigm of mutual immanence he sought to explain.  To
complete this theory, we need to postulate precisely what it is that Essence
negates.

Considered as a logical proposition, the act of negation must, in
Whitehead's words, result in a subjective "want or deficiency . that is felt
as value."  I hold that two logical principles are inviolable in
constructing a cosmology of Essence: 1) What is absolute cannot logically
diminish itself in the act of creating another, and 2) What Essence does it
does absolutely.  I also hold to the Cusan logic of non-contradictory
identity which states that Essence is the "not-other" to which no created
other is opposed.  The only absolute within the potentiality of Essence that
can be negated without reducing the absolute identity is Nothingness -- the
antithesis of Essence.  Only a being with nothingness as its subjective core
can possess the autonomy necessary for free and unbiased valuation of its
beingness.

What is actually created by this negation of Nothingness is a hypostasis for
differentiated existence and its cognizant agent.  The primordial reality is
a dichotomy: subjective awareness/objective beingness.  It is here that I
invariably get challenging questions.  What is the meaning of "beingness" in
this metaphysical hypothesis?  How can nothingness be an agent of valuation?
If a being is required for subjective awareness, doesn't this violate the
principle that Essence precedes Existence?

Some of the difficulty can be eliminated if it is understood that Creation
is not a temporal process as Whitehead defined it.  Actualization in the
metaphysical sense is a mode or phase of Essence, rather than a transition
or evolution of Nature.  The human precept of "duration" arises as a result
of the individual's "serialized" experience of objectivized reality, but
time and space are not intrinsic to the essential source.

In my Philosophy of Essence, I suggest that the contingencies "beingness"
and "awareness" are both "devalued" by the negation of Essence.  That is to
say, being lacks the value of awareness, while awareness lacks (but is
innately sensible to) the value of being.  Lacking value of their own, these
essents or "negates" are each drawn to the value of the other which is their
essential reality.  From a teleological viewpoint, negation creates an
"unbalanced system" whose subjective agent is driven to reverse the
differentiating affects of negation.  I know it seems strange, but I
maintain that the dynamics of existence are such that the "negate" negates
its own nothingness, thereby reclaiming its essential value and ending the
dichotomy.

Once these concepts are understood, the paradigm can be seen as coming full
circle.  Value is the "immanent factor", as Whitehead correctly surmised.
But Reality is NOT the fusion of infinite possibilities; it is the unified
Essence of which finite existence provides only a fleeting glimpse through
the subjective realization of Value.  In the life-experience the
value-deficient agent seeks its essential reality in the value of being for
itself, completing the cycle of actualization.

In the last analysis, Whitehead's creatively active "process" is only a
finite, valuistic perspective of "ultimate reality", the undivided,
immutable Essence.

I hope this reflection on Sneddon's analysis is enlightening to somebody.
Anyway, thanks for the opportunity.

Enjoy the holiday season,
Ham