Park, Sang Tae.  “The Abstractness of Actual Entity in A. N. Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism.”  The Journal of Whitehead Studies 3 (2000): 7-30. 

Abstract

All thoughts are doomed to be abstract. This is because the contents of our experiences are dynamic while the concepts are static. However, unless the concepts are schematized we are not able to encounter the concreteness of our experiences. In this respect, the conceptual scheme should be substantially applied to our experiences. Such an empirical requirement is of vital importance to Whitehead's 'philosophy of organism', which too is a system of concepts in itself. Whitehead's own measure of criticism, 'the fallacy of misplaced concreteness', has been applied to empirical tests in many fields of thought, including the science and philosophy of the 17th Century in particular.

Then, what about his own conceptual scheme? Whitehead's scheme that attempts to describe the whole realm of our experiences may only be examined by means of his own measure of criticism. In this paper, we question the abstractness of Whitehead's scheme by the measure of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. The notion of 'actual entity' is the focal thesis of debate, as this notion signifies the only kind of actualities that the world is composed of, in the philosophy of organism.

The concepts of actual entity, together with nexus and society, are put to the test with reference to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness and the consequent satisfactory assessment fortifies that his scheme is not an abstract one. However, in evaluating the concreteness of Whitehead's philosophy of organism one is faced with two further important justification issues: independent validation and applicability to our experiences.

E. H. Kimball contends that unless Whitehead's theory of perception secures an independent validation the concreteness of his scheme presents a petitio principii. Then, how is the validation achieved? This cannot be answered by any rational inference because it is not a logical problem, but a practical one.

In pursuing the practical formulation of validation, the Whiteheadian conceptual scheme must be vigorously driven and applied to the limits of all experiential spheres. This may be the only sound way to inquire into the concreteness of the Whiteheadian scheme, and to approach the concreteness of our own experiences.

The paper is presented in the following sequence. Firstly, R. L. Fetz's critique to the abstractness of actual entity is introduced, followed by F. B. Wallack's alternative views to Fetz's critique in the second part. Thirdly, the concepts of 'nexus' and 'society' in the context of philosophy of organism are elucidated in coherence with the concept of actual entity. Finally, the concreteness of actual entity is examined on the grounds of Whitehead's own theory of perception. In conclusion, Whitehead's philosophy of organism, founded on the conceptual basis of actual entity, nexus and society, is neither a dualistic nor a reductionistic scheme.  [Abstract from The Journal of Whitehead Studies]