Here are some things we can say about all actual entities at any scale: subatomic, atomic, molecular, cellular, biological, angelic, demonic, extraterrestrial, or divine. They seek satisfaction, aim at intensity of experience, have conceptual feelings as well as physical feelings, receive initial aims from God, develop their own subjective aims, are connected to every other event in the universe, are self-creative and self-enjoying, and aim at a certain kind of beauty, understood as harmony and intensity. Here is something we cannot say: they are conscious of any of this. In this page, I want to talk about Whitehead's understanding of consciousness and experience.
Misconceptions About Consciousness
A common misconception is that Whitehead attributes consciousness to all levels of matter. In reality, Whitehead reserves consciousness for more complex entities, such as human beings and certain animals, where it emerges under specific conditions. What is common to all entities, according to Whitehead, is that they possess experience in a more basic form, which he refers to as "prehension." This foundational experience is not necessarily conscious but is a form of feeling or perception at a fundamental level of existence.
Prehensive Unification
Whitehead's concept of experience revolves around "prehension," which is the process by which an entity "grasps" or integrates various aspects of the universe into a unified moment of experience. This unification is not random but is guided by the internal aims or purposes of the entity. Every event, no matter how simple or complex, involves this prehensive unification, where the entity synthesizes its past, its environment, and its potential future into a coherent experience.
Experience as an Event, Not a "Thing"
In Whitehead’s philosophy, experience, as it occurs, is not a static "thing" or substance; rather, it is a dynamic event or happening. It is an act of what he calls concrescence. Experience occurs in the flow of time, as entities continuously interact with and respond to their surroundings. This understanding shifts the focus from experience as a possession of a "thing" to experience as an ongoing process that constitutes reality.
Experience is Momentary
Whitehead emphasizes that experience occurs in discrete, momentary events, which he refers to as "actual occasions" or "drops of experience." Each momentary experience is a complete and self-contained unit that integrates various elements of the universe, creating a unique event. These moments are not continuous but rather successive, with each one building upon the previous ones.
Experience Includes Desire and Emotion
In Whitehead's framework, experience is not merely cognitive or perceptual; it also includes affective dimensions such as desire and emotion. These elements contribute to the subjective intensity of each moment of experience, influencing how an entity feels about its existence and how it interacts with the world. Desire and emotion are thus central to understanding the richness and complexity of experience.
Experience Need Not Be Conscious
Whitehead differentiates between conscious and non-conscious experience. Much of human experience, and experience in general, is non-conscious. Non-conscious experiences contribute significantly to the overall fabric of reality, influencing actions and reactions without being part of deliberate, reflective thought.
Consciousness is an Emergent Property
Consciousness arises under specific conditions and is not fundamental to all experience. According to Whitehead, while all entities experience in some form, consciousness itself emerges in more complex entities where conditions allow for higher-order reflection and self-awareness.
Value of Non-Conscious Experience
Non-conscious experiences are vital and contribute to reality, challenging the idea that consciousness is the pinnacle of existence. They are integral to the functioning of both simple and complex entities, influencing their behavior and interaction with the world in ways that do not necessarily require awareness or deliberate thought.
Mathematical and Qualitative Understandings both Helpful
Experience can be understood both mathematically and qualitatively through the notion of extensive connections. This dual approach highlights the ability to analyze experience in terms of quantitative relationships as well as through qualitative, experiential dimensions, reflecting the richness and diversity of reality.
First-Person and Third-Person Perspectives both Helpful
Experience can be understood from both first-person and third-person perspectives. First-person perspectives focus on subjective, phenomenological experiences, while third-person perspectives involve analytical and objective observations. Together, these perspectives offer a comprehensive understanding of experience, encompassing both personal and external viewpoints.
Beyond Carbon-Based Life
Whitehead’s philosophy allows for the possibility that experience and consciousness may extend beyond carbon-based life forms. This perspective opens the door to considering how experience might manifest in different forms of life or in non-biological entities, reflecting a broader understanding of the potential for consciousness in the universe.
Even the Living Whole of the Universe, Even God, Experiences
Whitehead’s philosophy posits that the universe itself is a living, dynamic whole, and this holistic view extends to the divine. Both the universe and God experience reality, though in different ways. For the universe, experience is an integration of all entities and events, reflecting a continuous process of becoming. This includes both conscious and unconscious elements: the universe, as a collective of countless entities, experiences a vast array of interactions and integrations that may not always be conscious or self-aware.
Similarly, Whitehead's conception of God includes both conscious and unconscious aspects. God, in Whitehead’s view, is not only a conscious participant, located everywhere at once, who interacts with the world but also, in God's primordial nature, a non-temporal cosmic mind, largely unconscious, but envisioning the potentialities of the universe.
A common misconception is that Whitehead attributes consciousness to all levels of matter. In reality, Whitehead reserves consciousness for more complex entities, such as human beings and certain animals, where it emerges under specific conditions. What is common to all entities, according to Whitehead, is that they possess experience in a more basic form, which he refers to as "prehension." This foundational experience is not necessarily conscious but is a form of feeling or perception at a fundamental level of existence.
Prehensive Unification
Whitehead's concept of experience revolves around "prehension," which is the process by which an entity "grasps" or integrates various aspects of the universe into a unified moment of experience. This unification is not random but is guided by the internal aims or purposes of the entity. Every event, no matter how simple or complex, involves this prehensive unification, where the entity synthesizes its past, its environment, and its potential future into a coherent experience.
Experience as an Event, Not a "Thing"
In Whitehead’s philosophy, experience, as it occurs, is not a static "thing" or substance; rather, it is a dynamic event or happening. It is an act of what he calls concrescence. Experience occurs in the flow of time, as entities continuously interact with and respond to their surroundings. This understanding shifts the focus from experience as a possession of a "thing" to experience as an ongoing process that constitutes reality.
Experience is Momentary
Whitehead emphasizes that experience occurs in discrete, momentary events, which he refers to as "actual occasions" or "drops of experience." Each momentary experience is a complete and self-contained unit that integrates various elements of the universe, creating a unique event. These moments are not continuous but rather successive, with each one building upon the previous ones.
Experience Includes Desire and Emotion
In Whitehead's framework, experience is not merely cognitive or perceptual; it also includes affective dimensions such as desire and emotion. These elements contribute to the subjective intensity of each moment of experience, influencing how an entity feels about its existence and how it interacts with the world. Desire and emotion are thus central to understanding the richness and complexity of experience.
Experience Need Not Be Conscious
Whitehead differentiates between conscious and non-conscious experience. Much of human experience, and experience in general, is non-conscious. Non-conscious experiences contribute significantly to the overall fabric of reality, influencing actions and reactions without being part of deliberate, reflective thought.
Consciousness is an Emergent Property
Consciousness arises under specific conditions and is not fundamental to all experience. According to Whitehead, while all entities experience in some form, consciousness itself emerges in more complex entities where conditions allow for higher-order reflection and self-awareness.
Value of Non-Conscious Experience
Non-conscious experiences are vital and contribute to reality, challenging the idea that consciousness is the pinnacle of existence. They are integral to the functioning of both simple and complex entities, influencing their behavior and interaction with the world in ways that do not necessarily require awareness or deliberate thought.
Mathematical and Qualitative Understandings both Helpful
Experience can be understood both mathematically and qualitatively through the notion of extensive connections. This dual approach highlights the ability to analyze experience in terms of quantitative relationships as well as through qualitative, experiential dimensions, reflecting the richness and diversity of reality.
First-Person and Third-Person Perspectives both Helpful
Experience can be understood from both first-person and third-person perspectives. First-person perspectives focus on subjective, phenomenological experiences, while third-person perspectives involve analytical and objective observations. Together, these perspectives offer a comprehensive understanding of experience, encompassing both personal and external viewpoints.
Beyond Carbon-Based Life
Whitehead’s philosophy allows for the possibility that experience and consciousness may extend beyond carbon-based life forms. This perspective opens the door to considering how experience might manifest in different forms of life or in non-biological entities, reflecting a broader understanding of the potential for consciousness in the universe.
Even the Living Whole of the Universe, Even God, Experiences
Whitehead’s philosophy posits that the universe itself is a living, dynamic whole, and this holistic view extends to the divine. Both the universe and God experience reality, though in different ways. For the universe, experience is an integration of all entities and events, reflecting a continuous process of becoming. This includes both conscious and unconscious elements: the universe, as a collective of countless entities, experiences a vast array of interactions and integrations that may not always be conscious or self-aware.
Similarly, Whitehead's conception of God includes both conscious and unconscious aspects. God, in Whitehead’s view, is not only a conscious participant, located everywhere at once, who interacts with the world but also, in God's primordial nature, a non-temporal cosmic mind, largely unconscious, but envisioning the potentialities of the universe.
Thinking about Experience
in Mathematical Terms
Whitehead's idea of Extensive Connections
Whitehead’s philosophy of process posits that all experiences are interconnected through what he terms "prehensions." These prehensions are the basic units of reality, representing how entities "grasp" or "take account of" other entities in the process of becoming. Each moment of experience, or "actual occasion," is not isolated but is deeply interconnected with past experiences, influencing and being influenced by them in a dynamic, ongoing process.
Mathematical Structure of Prehensive Connections
Prehensions are not random or chaotic; they exhibit a structured and orderly pattern that can be understood mathematically. Whitehead suggests that these connections have an extensive quality, meaning they are spread out in space and time, forming a network of relations. This network can be described using the mathematics of set theory, topology, and even graph theory, where each actual occasion can be seen as a node connected to other nodes through its prehensive relations.
In set theory, for example, each actual occasion could be represented as a set containing its prehensions. The union and intersection of these sets describe how different occasions overlap and influence each other. In topology, the connections between occasions can be modeled as continuous mappings, where the "closeness" of occasions is determined by the strength of their prehensive relations. Graph theory offers another perspective, where the prehensive connections form edges between nodes, creating a network that can be analyzed for patterns, connectivity, and flow of influence.
Extensive Connection and Process Philosophy
The extensive nature of prehensive connections suggests that every actual occasion is a composite of past experiences, each contributing to the formation of the present. This idea aligns with the mathematical concept of integration, where the sum of previous influences gives rise to the current state. In Whitehead's metaphysics, this integration is not merely additive but involves a creative synthesis, where the many become one and are increased by one. This process is recursive and ongoing, forming the fabric of reality.
The mathematical understanding of these connections also points to the fractal nature of experience. Like fractals, where the whole is mirrored in its parts, each actual occasion reflects the extensive network of prehensions that constitute it. This recursive pattern is a hallmark of Whitehead's process thought, where the smallest units of reality exhibit the same structural complexity as the larger whole.
Implications for Understanding Experience
Understanding prehensive connections mathematically enriches our comprehension of how experience operates on a fundamental level. It shows that experience is not merely a subjective phenomenon but is deeply embedded in a network of relationships that can be described and analyzed through mathematical concepts. This mathematical perspective does not reduce the richness of experience but rather highlights the underlying order and structure that give rise to the complex, dynamic nature of reality as described by Whitehead.
This approach also opens the door to new interdisciplinary studies, where philosophy, mathematics, and even physics intersect, offering deeper insights into the nature of reality and experience. By exploring the extensive properties of experience through the lens of mathematics, we gain a more comprehensive understanding of the interconnectedness that defines our existence.
Consciousness as a Feeling of Negation
We—as enduring objects with personal order—objectify the occasions of our own past with peculiar completeness in our immediate present. We find in those occasions, as known from our present standpoint, a surprising variation in the range and intensity of our realized knowledge. We sleep; we are half-awake; we are aware of our perceptions, but are devoid of generalities in thought; we are vividly absorbed within a small region of abstract thought while oblivious to the world around; we are attending to our emotions—some torrent of passion—to them and to nothing else; we are morbidly discursive in the width of our attention; and finally we sink back into temporary obliviousness, sleeping or stunned. Also we can remember factors experienced in our immediate past, which at the time we failed to notice. When we survey the chequered history of our own capacity for knowledge, does common sense allow us to believe that the operations of judgment, operations which require definition in terms of conscious apprehension, are those operations which are foundational in existence either as an essential attribute for an actual entity, or as the final culmination whereby unity of experience is attained?The general case1 of conscious perception is the negative perception, namely, ‘perceiving this stone as not grey.’ The ‘grey’ then has ingression in its full character of a conceptual novelty, illustrating an alternative. In the positive case, ‘perceiving this stone as grey,’ the grey has ingression in its character of a possible novelty, but in fact by its conformity emphasizing the dative grey, blindly felt. Consciousness is the feeling of negation: in the perception of ‘the stone as grey,’ such feeling is in barest germ; in the perception of ‘the stone as not grey,’ such feeling is in full development. Thus the negative perception is the triumph of consciousness. It finally rises to the peak of free imagination, in which the conceptual novelties search through a universe in which they are not datively exemplified. Consciousness is the subjective form involved in feeling the contrast between the ‘theory’ which may be erroneous and the fact which is ‘given.’
Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality (Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927-28) (p. 161). Free Press. Kindle Edition.
What Is But Could Not Be
The Affirmation-Negation Contrast
"Also, all awareness, even awareness of concepts, requires at least the synthesis of physical feelings with conceptual feeling. In awareness actuality, as a process in fact, is integrated with the potentialities which illustrate either what it is and might not be, or what it is not and might be. In other words, there is no consciousness without reference to definiteness, affirmation, and negation. Also affirmation involves its contrast with negation, and negation involves its contrast with affirmation. Further, affirmation and negation are alike meaningless apart from reference to the definiteness of particular actualities. Consciousness is how we feel the affirmation-negation contrast."
Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality (Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927-28) (p. 161). Free Press. Kindle Edition.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality (Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927-28) (p. 161). Free Press. Kindle Edition.