Not a Mirror but a Lure
Wittgenstein’s Gift to Process Philosophy
There may come a time—and for some, it’s already here—when process thinkers move beyond the Tractarian shadow. When they stop treating concepts like “actual entity” or “God as persuasive love” as if they were mirror images of the real, and start treating them as tools for meaning-making, gestures toward mystery, or guides for living well together. When philosophical and theological language is not judged simply by its reflective clarity or its referential precision, but by its capacity to awaken, transform, and co-create. An interest in reference will not fall away, but it will not be dogmatic in spirit. In that moment, process philosophy and theology might become not less metaphysical, but more existential, performative, and liberating. Less about having the right mirror—and more about participating in the right kinds of life-giving conversations about how best to live in the world. Truth be told, many process philosophers already take this approach. They have received Wittgenstein's gift.
The Tractarian Shadow in Process Thinking
Many process philosophers and theologians are early Wittgensteinians. They adopt, often without realizing it, a picture theory of language. They assume that the central ideas important to them—actual occasions, eternal objects, God, the divine lure, concrescence, prehension—are not just helpful metaphors or conceptual tools, but accurate pictures of how the world truly is. They speak as if these terms correspond to metaphysical realities with something like photographic or mirror-like precision.
Contrary to many readings of Wittgenstein, these process thinkers typically emphasize the importance of “metaphysics,” but they treat metaphysics itself in mirror-like terms: a set of concepts designed to reflect the deep structure of reality as it actually is. Their commitments to a process or relational metaphysic are grounded in the belief that it offers a truer reflection of the universe and of God than classical theism or mechanistic materialism. In this sense, they are Tractarians—followers, in spirit, of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, even if they’ve never read a word of it.
Wittgenstein’s Turn: From Mirror to Use
In his later work, Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein turned away from the idea that language functions by mirroring reality. He came to see language as fundamentally social, practical, and embedded in forms of life. Words do not get their meaning by picturing the world, but by how they are used in specific language-games. A theological sentence like “God is love” does not gain its significance from depicting an ontological state of affairs. It gains its force from how it is spoken, heard, embodied, trusted, doubted, and lived within the practices of a community.
This also means that different words can be used in different ways, even if they appear the same on the surface. Words like omnipotence, creation out of nothing, salvation, or divine action are not fixed in meaning by dictionary definitions. Their significance lies in how they function in lived experience. Are they used to inspire awe or instill fear? To comfort or to control? To liberate or to justify dominance?
A later Wittgensteinian approach, shaped by the Philosophical Investigations, urges us to look at how metaphysical and theological language actually operates in real lives. The question is not “What does this word mean in the abstract?” but rather “What is this word doing here, now, in this context?” Philosophy and theology, then, are not just a matter of getting terms right—they are matter of noticing what kind of world these terms help facilitate and construct.
If we take this Wittgenstein seriously, then perhaps process thinkers ought to ask themselves: Are our ideas about God and the universe really descriptions, or are they invitations? Propositions, or practices? What if the point isn’t to get the metaphysical mirror “clean,” but to speak in a way that heals, liberates, enlivens, and orients us toward richer modes of becoming, and that, along the way, is plausible enough even with its rough edges. Plausibility is not certitude; it is, as Whitehead says, but a likely story.
Whitehead’s Bridge: Propositions as Lures
Here’s where Whitehead offers an unexpected bridge. He suggests that we think of propositions not as representations of fact, but as lures for feeling, which may or may not be 'true' in relation in relation to the actual world to which it refers and from which it emerges. A proposition, he writes, is a lure toward a possible feeling, a potential way of experiencing and interpreting the world. This isn’t a mirror theory—it’s something more dynamic, more open. Propositions, for Whitehead, do not so much reflect the world as evoke responses. They are calls to feeling, invitations to become, prompts that shape the emotional and imaginative contours of our lives.
In this way, Whitehead’s metaphysics—at least at its best—is not a house of mirrors but a kind of cosmic poetics. His theological language can be read less as a definitive reflection of how God or reality is, and more as a way of shaping how we feel and act in relation to the world. “God is the poet of the world” is not a statement to be tested against external facts; it is a gesture, a summons, a lure to perceive the universe as a work of ongoing creativity.
A New Role for Metaphysics
This is not a rejection of metaphysical speculation—it’s a repositioning of its role. It suggests that theology is not about securing final truths but about cultivating fruitful possibilities. Theology becomes a grammar of orientation, a language-game that matters because of what it does, not what it reflects. The question becomes not “Is this true in the absolute sense?” but “What kind of life does this language make possible?”
Leaving the Tractarian shadow does not require abandoning referential language altogether. Open and relational (or process) philosophers need not deny that terms like actual entity, prehension, or God refer to something real—something that exists independent of the language games in which these words are employed. They will still affirm that their metaphysical language points toward features of a world that is not merely linguistic or socially constructed. But they will also recognize that pointing is not picturing. To say that language refers is not to say that it mirrors. The shift, then, is not from realism to relativism, but from mirror-theory to meaning-in-use, from seeking perfect representations to cultivating responsible, imaginative, and context-sensitive expressions. In doing so, process thinkers can strike a better balance—acknowledging the ontological significance of their claims while remaining attuned to the performative, ethical, and affective dimensions of the words they choose.
It is also the case that, when process philosophy and theology leave the Tractarian shadow, they become more empirical—not in the narrow sense of data collection, but in the deeper sense of attending to lived experience. They become more responsive to the actual diversity of forms of life in which language functions. Instead of seeking timeless formulations, they attend to how theological and metaphysical language is used across cultures, communities, and histories—to how words evolve, how meanings shift, and how language shapes and is shaped by embodied human life. In this way, process thought becomes less about enforcing a metaphysical system from above and more about listening from below—watching, feeling, and participating in the ways language guides action, evokes feeling, and opens possibility within the plural worlds of human (and more-than-human) becoming.
Beyond the Mirror
There may come a time—and for some, it’s already here—when process thinkers move beyond the Tractarian shadow. When they stop treating concepts like “actual entity” or “God as persuasive love” as if they were mirror images of the real, and start treating them as tools for meaning-making, gestures toward mystery, or guides for living well together. When philosophical and theological language is not judged by its reflective clarity, but by its capacity to awaken, transform, and co-create. An interest in reference will not fall away, but it will not be dogmatic in spirit.
In that moment, process philosophy and theology might become not less metaphysical, but more existential, performative, and liberating. Less about having the right mirror—and more about participating in the right kinds of life-giving conversations.
Many process philosophers and theologians are early Wittgensteinians. They adopt, often without realizing it, a picture theory of language. They assume that the central ideas important to them—actual occasions, eternal objects, God, the divine lure, concrescence, prehension—are not just helpful metaphors or conceptual tools, but accurate pictures of how the world truly is. They speak as if these terms correspond to metaphysical realities with something like photographic or mirror-like precision.
Contrary to many readings of Wittgenstein, these process thinkers typically emphasize the importance of “metaphysics,” but they treat metaphysics itself in mirror-like terms: a set of concepts designed to reflect the deep structure of reality as it actually is. Their commitments to a process or relational metaphysic are grounded in the belief that it offers a truer reflection of the universe and of God than classical theism or mechanistic materialism. In this sense, they are Tractarians—followers, in spirit, of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, even if they’ve never read a word of it.
Wittgenstein’s Turn: From Mirror to Use
In his later work, Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein turned away from the idea that language functions by mirroring reality. He came to see language as fundamentally social, practical, and embedded in forms of life. Words do not get their meaning by picturing the world, but by how they are used in specific language-games. A theological sentence like “God is love” does not gain its significance from depicting an ontological state of affairs. It gains its force from how it is spoken, heard, embodied, trusted, doubted, and lived within the practices of a community.
This also means that different words can be used in different ways, even if they appear the same on the surface. Words like omnipotence, creation out of nothing, salvation, or divine action are not fixed in meaning by dictionary definitions. Their significance lies in how they function in lived experience. Are they used to inspire awe or instill fear? To comfort or to control? To liberate or to justify dominance?
A later Wittgensteinian approach, shaped by the Philosophical Investigations, urges us to look at how metaphysical and theological language actually operates in real lives. The question is not “What does this word mean in the abstract?” but rather “What is this word doing here, now, in this context?” Philosophy and theology, then, are not just a matter of getting terms right—they are matter of noticing what kind of world these terms help facilitate and construct.
If we take this Wittgenstein seriously, then perhaps process thinkers ought to ask themselves: Are our ideas about God and the universe really descriptions, or are they invitations? Propositions, or practices? What if the point isn’t to get the metaphysical mirror “clean,” but to speak in a way that heals, liberates, enlivens, and orients us toward richer modes of becoming, and that, along the way, is plausible enough even with its rough edges. Plausibility is not certitude; it is, as Whitehead says, but a likely story.
Whitehead’s Bridge: Propositions as Lures
Here’s where Whitehead offers an unexpected bridge. He suggests that we think of propositions not as representations of fact, but as lures for feeling, which may or may not be 'true' in relation in relation to the actual world to which it refers and from which it emerges. A proposition, he writes, is a lure toward a possible feeling, a potential way of experiencing and interpreting the world. This isn’t a mirror theory—it’s something more dynamic, more open. Propositions, for Whitehead, do not so much reflect the world as evoke responses. They are calls to feeling, invitations to become, prompts that shape the emotional and imaginative contours of our lives.
In this way, Whitehead’s metaphysics—at least at its best—is not a house of mirrors but a kind of cosmic poetics. His theological language can be read less as a definitive reflection of how God or reality is, and more as a way of shaping how we feel and act in relation to the world. “God is the poet of the world” is not a statement to be tested against external facts; it is a gesture, a summons, a lure to perceive the universe as a work of ongoing creativity.
A New Role for Metaphysics
This is not a rejection of metaphysical speculation—it’s a repositioning of its role. It suggests that theology is not about securing final truths but about cultivating fruitful possibilities. Theology becomes a grammar of orientation, a language-game that matters because of what it does, not what it reflects. The question becomes not “Is this true in the absolute sense?” but “What kind of life does this language make possible?”
Leaving the Tractarian shadow does not require abandoning referential language altogether. Open and relational (or process) philosophers need not deny that terms like actual entity, prehension, or God refer to something real—something that exists independent of the language games in which these words are employed. They will still affirm that their metaphysical language points toward features of a world that is not merely linguistic or socially constructed. But they will also recognize that pointing is not picturing. To say that language refers is not to say that it mirrors. The shift, then, is not from realism to relativism, but from mirror-theory to meaning-in-use, from seeking perfect representations to cultivating responsible, imaginative, and context-sensitive expressions. In doing so, process thinkers can strike a better balance—acknowledging the ontological significance of their claims while remaining attuned to the performative, ethical, and affective dimensions of the words they choose.
It is also the case that, when process philosophy and theology leave the Tractarian shadow, they become more empirical—not in the narrow sense of data collection, but in the deeper sense of attending to lived experience. They become more responsive to the actual diversity of forms of life in which language functions. Instead of seeking timeless formulations, they attend to how theological and metaphysical language is used across cultures, communities, and histories—to how words evolve, how meanings shift, and how language shapes and is shaped by embodied human life. In this way, process thought becomes less about enforcing a metaphysical system from above and more about listening from below—watching, feeling, and participating in the ways language guides action, evokes feeling, and opens possibility within the plural worlds of human (and more-than-human) becoming.
Beyond the Mirror
There may come a time—and for some, it’s already here—when process thinkers move beyond the Tractarian shadow. When they stop treating concepts like “actual entity” or “God as persuasive love” as if they were mirror images of the real, and start treating them as tools for meaning-making, gestures toward mystery, or guides for living well together. When philosophical and theological language is not judged by its reflective clarity, but by its capacity to awaken, transform, and co-create. An interest in reference will not fall away, but it will not be dogmatic in spirit.
In that moment, process philosophy and theology might become not less metaphysical, but more existential, performative, and liberating. Less about having the right mirror—and more about participating in the right kinds of life-giving conversations.
A BBC Introduction to Wittgenstein: In Our Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, work and legacy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. There is little doubt that he was a towering figure of the twentieth century; on his return to Cambridge in 1929 Maynard Keynes wrote, “Well, God has arrived. I met him on the 5:15 train”.Wittgenstein is credited with being the greatest philosopher of the modern age, a thinker who left not one but two philosophies for his descendents to argue over: The early Wittgenstein said, “the limits of my mind mean the limits of my world”; the later Wittgenstein replied, “If God looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of”. Language was at the heart of both. Wittgenstein stated that his purpose was to finally free humanity from the pointless and neurotic philosophical questing that plagues us all. As he put it, “To show the fly the way out of the fly bottle”. How did he think language could solve all the problems of philosophy? How have his ideas influenced contemporary culture? And could his thought ever achieve the release for us that he hoped it would? With Ray Monk, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton and author of Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius; Barry Smith, Lecturer in Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London; Marie McGinn, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of York.