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Dr. Kaza applauds Dr. Paul O. Ingram’s enthusiasm for Buddhist-Christian dialogue on the critical topic concerning the terrible cumulative impacts on the planet’s air and water, landforms and ecosystems and their devastation as an outcome of human activity over the recent past.
There is a gap between the vocabulary of process thought and the mindset of traditional culture, but this is certainly not grounds for a rejection of Whitehead and his influence. The author looks at process theodicy (the problem of evil) in the context of the Shona people of Zimbabwe.
The author presents a dialogue with Bergson involving Gunter and Hausman with occasional comments by Auxier and Stark. The dialogue shows how their minds have been changed.
Whitehead’s thought is not limited to metaphysics and science, but to diverse fields of inquiry -- mathematical logic, the philosophy of science, cosmology. A synthesis of these various systems were vital to the growth of his thought.
Dr. Wilcox questions the philosophical and textual motivations of a pluralistic interpretation of Whitehead. He presents an explicitly monistic interpretation which holds that there is a sense in which creativity exists apart from its plurality of instances.
The author writes a parody on "The Night Before Christmas" with a bit of process interjection.
The author states some of the analytical similarities between Deutsch (Karl W. Deutsch: The Nerves of Government) and Whitehead in the hope that they will provide an organic philosophy with a clearer sense of the terrain upon which can be discovered the form and content of its own particular political speech.
Dr. Hamrick believes that Merleau-Ponty’s work might have been different if he had known Whitehead’s mature process metaphysics. Hamrick’s view is that Whitehead’s metaphysics can explain almost all of Merleau-Ponty’s subsequent reflections on the flesh.
Hartshorne states that Leonard Thompson Troland was wrong about all theoretical problems being scientific ones. All of Troland’s ethical views derive from science, but Hartshorne does agree with him that in an ultimate world-view the key science is not physics but psychology. Only psychology can deal with the inclusive form of reality, the concrete as such.
Dr. Schmidt draws attention to a neglected passage in Process and Reality regarding the discussion of the plenum summing up the extensive continuum in the ‘organic theory’.
Ivor Leclerc discusses his disagreement with Professor Justus Buchler’s criticism of Whitehead’s metaphysical position of "ontological priority" as well as "ontological parity."
The author presents a process model for revelation, an approach that is in keeping with Whitehead’s extensive use of physical analogies in the formulation of his metaphysics.
The author responds to Joseph Bracken as one who is moving the central debate away from the notion of God as a metaphysical necessity. Refer to Joseph Bracken, Prehending God in and Through the World.
Truth is the properly qualified carryover of the value of a thing into the interpreting experience of that thing. The author suggests three preliminary parts: a theory of reality: a theory of interpretation, of value and of valuation -- each developed on the other.
Whitehead seems to find what he calls the "intuition of peace." And he would hold that the experience of the love of man achieved in this intuition supports the belief that any individual can change from an evil to a virtuous propensity, for perhaps unaccountably complex reasons.
The author sees Giles Deleuze as a pagan in his theory of evolution, metamorphosed into a Chaosmological Myth: an unqualified affirmation of the endless, goalless, production of Difference.
Whitehead's insights on death ("perpetual perishing" and "objective immortality.") were intuitive. The authors attempt to find a way of justifying some of these intuitions by Whitehead's own principles.
Whitehead he did not keep a diary, and was famous for not writing letters; they took too much time from his work. His talk was witty. In criticism he was truthful. A devastating comment was made with the utmost gentleness. He had a tendency to be ironic; but there was no malice in his irony.
The author challenges Nelson Pike’s criticism that everything that happens contributes to the ultimate good: There exists countless forms of real evil in the world.
Dr. Mesle shows four major strands in Henry Nelson Wieman’s critique of Whitehead: 1. An aesthetic approach to value; 2. God as "Something;" 3. The empiricism of Whitehead; 4. Whitehead’s speculations.
If we take seriously Whitehead’s claim that the fundamental form of order and hence of value is aesthetic, and the accompanying principle of relatedness, it is obvious that unilateral power (the ability to affect without being affected) inherently inhibits the growth of value in human experience.
Whitehead’s relativistic cosmology as developed in his major work, Process and Reality, though complex and difficult, is questioned by Dr. Welker. Nevertheless, Walker states, Whitehead’s relativistic cosmology establishes new standards and sets before us new tasks.
Dr. Smith looks at process thought and black liberation from a pastoral psychology perspective and black people’s experience of oppression: The struggle against oppression in black people’s experience is a constant struggle against external forces as manifested in economic, social, and political exploitation. It is also a struggle against internalized forms of oppression as manifested in negative self-images, depression, a sense of hopelessness, and apathy.
Whitehead devised his metaphysic to elucidate forms of experience besides perception, and to systematize concepts drawn from other sources Nevertheless, certain problems can be solved while accepting perception more nearly at face value than Whitehead did in his later theory.
The Achilles’ heel of process metaphysics is in the epistemological argument which shows that the denial of an enduring self is guilty of self-referential inconsistency.
The author reviews the history of anti-Judaism concluding with a number of process thinkers. He concludes, "Among process theologians God is not happily thought of as the ‘cosmic moralist,’ and the ‘divine lawgiver and judge’ often fails to find a warm welcome in our midst."
The relationship of Whitehead’s metaphysics to the traditional philosophy of substance, and especially to Aristotle’s concept of entity, is the central point not only for any systematic exposition of Whitehead but also for his historical interpretation.
The author compares the thoughts of Aristotle and Whitehead concerning the self-development of living beings.
The author demonstrates a way of thinking which exhibits expression and truth as joint concerns of the artist.
Dr. Pannenberg gives a critique of several Whiteheadian concepts: actual entities, atomism, prehension, subjective aim, superject, objective immortality.
Determinism conflicts with the common sense understanding of time and is to be rejected on that ground, but determinism is not absurd. However, the issue resolved is of little systematic importance to process metaphysics. Process philosophers can maintain their critique of classical substance, of absolute idealism, of materialism, and of classical theology without having it rest on the rather flimsy structure of a "refutation" of determinism.
Is human volition, which gives freedom to fix what otherwise would remain indeterminate, an exception in the natural order, or does freedom belong to Being?
Physicists now say what Whitehead said rather long ago: that nature consists, in the last analysis, of "events, not things." Physicists as such can hardly be expected to see also that causal inheritance is prehensive.
An analysis of a concept in process thought dealing with one aspect of quantum mechanics which theorizes that the earlier of two events cannot affect the other if the distance between them is so great that a light signal cannot traverse it during the time interval separating the two events.
The author introduces three papers concerning Henri Bergson the Calculus of Intuition. The three: 1. Pete A. Y. Gunter, Bergson, Mathematics, and Creativity; 2. Carl R. Hausman, Bergson, Peirce, and Reflective Intuition; and 3. Randall E. Auxier, Influence as Confluence: Bergson and Whitehead.
Bergson not only maintains an irreducible dualism of the ways of knowing but also the absolute character of both.
Dr. Gunter corrects two misunderstandings of Henri Bergson: 1. That his philosophy is "irrationalist." 2. That his philosophy is "literary." The author’s basic goal is to explain Dr. Bergson’s concept of the calculus.
Dr. Hausman suggests that both Bergson and Peirce had the insight to see that the cosmos, as well as human language, involves evolution from past to future and expands reality.
Science has traditionally ignored the significance of time. The attempt to treat all processes as theoretically reversible processes have failed to account for the results of many experimental investigations.
Bergsonian philosophy consists in a bold attempt to justify metaphysical knowledge on an intuitional basis. This current in Bergson’s thought is professedly anti-Cartesian. Bergson’s doctrine of durational embodiment constitutes, in fact, an early and highly original chapter in the effort to by-pass the nineteenth-century stalemate between intellectualistic-idealism and objectivistic-empiricism.
It seems Process thinking remains outside the main current of thought. This is one in a series of five articles written in exchange between William Hasker and David Griffin. (See the Problem of Evil in Process Theism and Classical Free-Will Theism by William Hasker; Traditional Free Will Theodicy and Process Theodicy: Haskeer’s Claim For Parity; "Bitten to Death By Ducks": A Reply to Griffin; On Hasker’s Defense of His Parity Claim by David Ray Griffin.
Dr. Stone calls us to face the worsening eco-crisis with new paradigms of thinking in all areas, in order to show the environmental relevance of a minimalist religious naturalism.
A discussion between Peter H. Hare and John Ryder concerning Justus Buchler’s Metaphysics of Natural Complexes and the relationship of his thoughts to process theology.
Goss is not concerned here with the validity of Whitehead’s conception of God, but rather to demonstrate that Camus’ writings leave open the possibility of God as understood by Whitehead, and that Camus’ thoughts on rebellion and its source in the beauty of nature are compatible with and made consistent by a process notion of God.
Leclerc’s account of the nature of composite material substances is wrong on three counts: 1. Substantial unity is depicted of the composite; 2. Emergent wholes are presented as more than the sums of their parts; 3. Substances are shown as acquiring new substantial forms.
How do we define what a Christian is? Is it not dependent upon who does the defining? Whitehead was a Christian philosopher in the sense that will be recognized if Christianity becomes tolerant enough to universalize itself.
In attempting to answer some of the basic questions about the nature of causality, actuality and the mental and physical poles, Whitehead is seeking a system that unifies knowledge, and is keeping alive the Cartesian approach to science and philosophy.
Living in an evolving physical and biological universe, Dr. Ahmed claims that human beings have an enormous and abiding burden of responsibility for maintaining the viability of the natural world .
Hartshorne’s fundamental position, writes the author, is that birth and death are the necessary boundaries to an existence that is fragmentary, and only God is capable of sustaining the infinite novelty that would be required for everlasting life.
The ontological argument is by no means superfluous, since it does not rest on the other arguments to guarantee the postulate of logical possibility, and gains support from them only insofar as that postulate is protected by those arguments against options they show to be specious.
In questioning Charles Hartshorne, the authors find that he is a prolific writer on topics ranging from neoclassical theism, the ontological argument for the existence of God, and philosophical psychology, to aesthetics, pacifism, and ornithology.
Charles Hartshorne’s wife has compiled this list of books referred to by Harshorne in his works.
The author’s object is to show that Hartshorne overestimates the argumentative power of his rationalistic principles in the process of eliminating other philosophical positions, and that genuine empirical criteria are inevitable if metaphysics is going to be something more than pure speculation.
The author writes that Cobb’s Christology describes a Jesus who is a mere possibility, not the actuality it purports to describe. Thus, it is at best a wholly speculative interpretation in no way grounded in the Jesus of history it professes to interpret.
Realism and quantum mechanics can both be retained once the ontology of classical materialism is fully relinquished. Process metaphysics has injected into the career of philosophy crucial ontological conceptions, both critical and constructive, which may well serve as seeds from which a fuller understanding of the nature of the physical world, in both science and philosophy, may grow.
Dr. Neville discusses criticisms of his thoughts by Hartshorne, Cobb and Ford. Freedom, Biblicism and dialogue are the main topics in which there is disagreement.
The author analyzes Stanley Hauerwas’ thought concerning character and virtue, the Christian story, and the relation between the church and the world based on process-relational thought.
There are elements in Sartre’s philosophy which are applicable to the Whiteheadian cosmos.
Does God know all possibilities that could come to pass? Can God knows possibilities before they become actual? The significance of this is that a possibility is not knowable in its distinctness until it becomes actual because before it becomes actual there is no it to be known.
Is there a sense in which possibilities are understood as constituting a continuum and yet can be eternally known in a way which would permit God to use his knowledge of them to decide his action in response to any possible situation? The author discusses this question in the light of Hartshorne, Richard Creel, John Cobb and Whitehead.
According the author, there is a lack of discussion about Whitehead’s view that scientific laws state principles which are immanent in nature but which evolve concurrently with novel changes in the entities actually constituting the universe.
That "there might have been nothing" is meaningless or contradictory. That we can conceive each particular thing not to exist implies that we can conceive nothing existing in its place. It assumes the falsity of how we make negative judgments.
In a world of pain, the need to continue to function is found in the hope that process-relational psychotherapy can empower people to critique and transform their world.
Dr. George Allan examines Whiteheadian themes in some of Benedetto Croce’s thought, in an attempt to make Whitehead's thought more understandable.
Perhaps we had best not attempt to distinguish culture and history. Better that we understand them as jointly constituted. Together they form a diachronous web the strands of which lead backward into multifarious pasts and forward toward an unintegratable plurality of presents.
A book review article by Hartshorne of John Bowlby’s Charles Darwin: A New Life. Hartshorne comments about Darwin’s theology.
The author reports on David Pailin, Britain’s foremost exponent of process-relational thought. Pailin speaks of the divine agency as a general teleological purpose -- a drive or intentional cosmic urge within the processes of reality.
The author holds that there is only the plurality of actual occasions, each with a limited perspective. His process orientation is toward a Whitehead decentered, toward a Whitehead without God, toward a neo-Whiteheadian naturalism -- a process thought in quite a new key.
Dr. Grange examines George Allan’s Importances of The Past. Allan shows that the past provides the present with spheres of relevance from which prevalent feelings of importances can be derived. Otherwise, we cannot hope to redeem their worth or beget their children.
To Whitehead there is an intrinsic importance of what happens to all things and how the effects of each act ramify throughout the whole. Therefore his philosophy can be understood as a deep ecology.
Two process philosophies, Organism and Organicism, serve three purposes for process studies: 1. Whitehead’s thought. 2. Other process philosophies. 3. "Radical critiques of process thought."
Cobb’s main objection to Hurtubise’s formulation is that it seems to imply that Ford thinks that his textual analysis indicates that Whitehead himself did not affirm the efficacy of the Consequent Nature in the world. But Cobb says that Ford acknowledges that Whitehead’s statement affirms such efficacy. See Lewis S. Ford and Traditional Interpretations of Whitehead’s Metaphysics by Denis Hurtubise.
The anthropocentrism to which the author is committed locates all reality in, and in relation to, consciousness and experience. Whitehead’s commitment refuses any reality whatsoever to that which is other than consciousness or experience. Altizer, a non-Whiteheadian theologian, entertains the supposition that Whitehead’s conception of the consequent nature of God has both a christological and an eschatological ground.
Many theologians who follow Whitehead and Hartshorne are largely concerned with questions of logical, theodicy, and compatibility with biblical and traditional theology. The author attempts to apply some basic Jungian criteria in evaluating the image of God in terms of these concepts.
Is the creating process itself one whole with "the many" as its parts, or is the completed satisfaction of a process the whole? The author discusses this and other ambiguities along with many of the insights of Whitehead.
The author seeks to correct some weaknesses in Ariel’s article Recent Empirical Disconfirmation of Whitehead’s Relativity Theory and to caution against too hasty a rejection of Whitehead’s theory of relativity (and with it his philosophy of nature) as a viable and living alternative to Einstein’s proposal. Currently there is considerable interest in correlating relativity theory with quantum mechanics. The efforts made in this direction tend to support Whitehead rather than Einstein.
Dr. Voskuil believes Palmyre M. F. Ooman blurs the distinction between concrete states and their generic aspects. She either imputes concreteness to common, abstract factors found in a series of concrete moments, committing the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness, or equivocates on the meaning of basic concepts.
This brief statement by Whitehead is introduced and edited by Robert S. Brumbaugh. It introduces the reader to some correspondence on Whitehead’s educational theory: 1. The development of genius; 2. The failure of classical education; 3. Some aspects of Whitehead’s interest in education.
In Whitehead’s treatment of time, three stages of development may be observed. The first embodies a philosophy of space-time with a realistic position assumed and nature accepted as consisting largely of space and of time. The second and third stages respectively stress concepts of "creativity" and of the "actual entity."
The classical theist indicts the process theist for "solving" the problem of evil by forfeiting a meaningful notion of divine omnipotence while the process theist indicts the classical theist for proposing a view of divine omnipotence that makes the problem of evil unsolvable. The authors attempt to show that neither indictment holds.
William Lane Craig’s views of Hartshorne, regarding God’s foreknowledge because of God’s omniscience, are misunderstood and unjust.
In the profoundest sense it would be strange to consider God amoral if the moral dimension in human experience is itself derived from God.
The author argues that we should reconceive concrescence itself as the active interweaving of efficient and final causation, understanding by efficient causation the entire career of physical feeling, not simply concentrating exclusively on its initial phase.
Dean suggests that American religious empiricists may have lapsed into objectivism at times, but a third position of speculative and radically empirical realism, a religious historicism, holds up well in the current forces of deconstructionism, neopragmatism, and language philosophy.
Bracken indicates how the field-approach to Whiteheadian societies allows for a trinitarian understanding of God in which the three divine persons of traditional Christian doctrine, by their dynamic interrelatedness from moment to moment, constitute a structured field of activity for the whole of creation. Metaphysics is considered to be an event-ontology rather than a substance-ontology.
Hausman believes that Peirce's insight is restricted in the role of eros and agape in creative evolution, but he also suggests the fruitfulness of his insight. The notion of agape introduced here is preferable to the use of the notion of eros in accounting for creativity.
The author has written critiques of Whitehead’s theory of perception and here gives new reasons to doubt the cogency and consistency of this theory of Whitehead’s. In particular, he argues that Whitehead’s account of perception in the mode of causal efficacy is question-begging.
The writers approach the problem of evil from the stance of process thought. Basic to their position is the view that God’s power is persuasive, not coercive.
Whitehead’s conceptuality explains the rise of good and the rise of evil without making God responsible for any evil which cannot be justified. (A response to Evil and Persuasive Power by Peter H. Hare and Edward H. Madden).
Stapledon brings together basic concerns for a viable community and a metaphysic, as his narrator questions the ultimate meaning of the only good he is able to perceive -- the symbiotic love of two human beings.
Dr. Lucas argues that evolution and evolutionist theories play no significant role in Whitehead’s metaphysics, and that there is no evidence in his major works of any significant influence from earlier process-oriented "evolutionary cosmologies."
The author suggests that a proper philosophy of nature is tied to environmental economics, a conception of labor that is thoughtful and with value, a vision of persons as inherently part of the natural world and as responsible decision-makers not alienated from nature.
The author offers a listing of Hartshorne’s achievements and difficulties, and concludes that his philosophy does not capture the living waters of experience. That is, it makes experience philosophically uninteresting.
The author argues that the view that the process account rests on experiences in some sense while other metaphysical and theological accounts do not, is at the very least thoroughly misleading, and at the very worst quite false.
Whitehead’s scheme for analyzing the temporal emergence of particular events provides a justification and explanation for the dynamics of historical narrative and also a set of concepts that could satisfy the demands of analytical critics.
Dr. Code holds that there is an unavoidable mystical dimension in every interpretation of nature. His conclusion is that the natural philosopher must strive to become as much mythologist as (to use Whitehead’s phrase) "critic of abstractions."
Liberation theologians should take seriously the metaphysical framwork for a praxis-oriented theology implicitly offered to them by process theology. Process thinkers must come to grips with the urgent social justice issues raised by liberation theologians.
Metaphysical principles have been attacked in recent years by analytic philosophers, but Hartshorne maintains that the analytic philosophers have succeeded only in tearing down antiquated metaphysical castles.
This article examines Whitehead’s theory of perception to indicate how this theory provides a philosophical reinterpretation for two issues of concern to feminists: criticism of cultural symbols, including language, and the importance of intuition and emotion, usually associated with women, in experience.
The author discusses the paper "Radical Relatedness and Feminist Separatism" by Nancy R. Howell. The more inclusive our actual world, the more expanded our potential for novel creations. However, there may well be a time and place for worldless dissociation.
Science threatens to control our lives and scramble our ethics and sense of human dignity. The author suggests that Whitehead would redefine the world view so that science and other forms of research would serve us better.
This article explores some of the implications for process philosophy of a new approach to brain psychology and the dynamics of the mental state -- microgenetic theory -- that has developed out of the study of symptoms in neurological cases.
Faithfulness fundamentally pertains only to the repetition of free actions. A God who acts freely only once, whether or not that action is somehow eternally present, cannot be faithful. God is faithful because he could, but does not, "sin" -- against his own previous primordial ideals. That God continues to relate himself to the world in a given way is a matter of grace, not of necessity.
Dr. Culp describes several discussions between evangelical theologians and process thinkers. Wesleyan theology is neither exclusively liberal nor evangelical, thus this discussion revolved around the more specific relationship between Wesleyan theology and process theology.
The author is haunted by the question: What is the mechanism involved in our encounter with eternal objects?
Ekbert Faas discusses the possible connections which might exist between Aristotelan poetics and the contemporary psychological theater as well as psychoanalysis itself.
The author defends his position in terms of insights and criticisms of several process thinkers: Robert Neville, John Cobb, F.H. Bradley, William A. Christian.
This article attempts to clarify the problem of succession. One of the most important problems is whether the genetic process within an actual occasion from initial data to satisfaction involves some kind of real or temporal succession.
Dr. Franklin suggests a revised doctrine of creativity in an attempt to affirm God as the source of creativity thus cohering better with some of Whitehead’s later systems.
So long as there are those who identify God with some one-sided abstraction like infinity; absoluteness, or worst of all omnipotence (not even a self-consistent abstraction), we shall need the help both of more balanced theists and of nontheists to counteract these more subtle and intellectual forms of idolatry.
The author shows that Lewis Ford’s attempt to solve the dilemma between Whitehead’s creativity and eternal objects is not solved but simply relocated.
The author illuminates problems generated by the appropriation of the terms "androgynous" and "gynandrous" in process theology.
The author analyzes Hartshorne’s personalism and compares it to Brightman’s and others. Hartshorne gives considerable attention to the concept of God as personal, and he might well be regarded as a personalist although he doesn’t fit the idealistic mode typical of American personalism.
Dr. King comments on the thoughts of Lorenzo Dow McCabe who attempted to challenge the metaphysical foundations of traditional Christian theology: If theological reconstruction is to meet the needs of philosophy, scriptural exegesis, and religious experience, thought McCabe, then theology must reassess its traditional theistic assumptions in such a way that it can speak of a God who is capable of relating fully to the contingencies of personal life and historical change.
Whitehead’s metaphysical system offers a political vision beyond liberalism and its assumptions of economic success.
Dr. Shields is not persuaded that Richard E. Creel’s critique of Hartshorne’s passibilism/impassibilism is acceptable, yet he feels Creel presents some sharp insights in examining some of Hartshorne’s primary doctrines.
Shalom and Robertson discuss Hartshorne and his ideas about "personal identity", about the idea that "to be" is "to create," about "soul-substance," about immortality, about the "person" and the "self."
One cannot do justice to Charles Hartshorne’s ethical system without taking seriously his particular understanding of experience as creative synthesis and his demand that one constantly confront the question of God.
Hartshorne makes the possible-actual distinction by insisting that the possible lacks the definiteness of the actual; possibility is essentially indefinite and determinable. Hence, actualization is the becoming (or incoming) of new definiteness. But Peters makes a clear distinction between facts and events, a distinction between definiteness (definite truth) and concrete entities themselves.
Any resort to bodily unity-continuity to explain the awareness of self-identifying unity despite intermittent consciousness does not resolve the problem.
The challenge of explaining reality’s ultimate features, which seems especially difficult to those who view all of reality, including God, in terms of process or becoming.
God’s cosmic presence establishes an influence in every new actuality. God’s supraluminal influence on worldly events may be finding empirical supports in addition to its metaphysical necessity.
Even Charles Hartshorne, the preeminent interpreter of process thinking, admitted that he could not reconcile his doctrine of god with relativity physics. The author discusses the dichotomy between the two ideas and offers some solutions.
Dr. Dombrowski examines Hartshorne’s views in three areas: 1. The features of virtue ethics; 2. Moderation as a feature of virtue ethics; 3. Abortion.
Both black and process theologies are defined in large part by their opposition to or protest against certain features of classical Western theism.
Dr. Pinches critiques Leslie Muray’s "Confessional Postmodernism and the Process- Relational Vision." He believes Muray does not so much build on as offer an alternative to Hauerwas’ thinking about virtue, character and Christian theology.
The author discusses an "historical process theology," and compares it to the already well developed and still valuable rationalistic process theology, empirical process theology, and speculative process theology.
Most, if not all, process theologians are basically philosophical theologians rather than systematic theologians who interiorize the understandings within the Christian Church community. This calls into question, for example, whether the eucharist is essential, whether scripture is normative, and whether the resurrection is optional. Process theologians need to distinguish between the requirements and objectives of philosophical and systematic theology.
The author shows how we can retain valuable process insights, such as that God is necessarily creative, social, loving, and embodied in some actual universe, and still affirm ex nihilo for our universe.
The concrete and reflexive circle invoked here by the author is the circle of Being, as the term "ontic power" concedes.
When, if ever, can the process theist condone the use of nonpersuasive power? Dr. Basinger argues that however the process theist attempts to respond, significant problems with the process system develop.
The author challenges the pretensions of process thought: The oppressed do not share process theology’s rationalism and idealism; it is too essentially rationalistic, European, and radically monistic.
Whitehead’s philosophy of organism, where the particular, actual entity is universal, resolves the epistemological problem of how to bridge the gap between the two orders -- existence and knowledge. Whitehead’s approach is unique among modem philosophical systems because he attempts to resolve a long-standing epistemological difficulty by an appeal to ontology, which is the inverse of the nominalist approach of most moderns.
Dr. Capek explains the distinction between immediate memory of earlier portions of the specious present and memory of the present. The totality of the past is present, not as a homogeneous bloc, but in the form of qualitative continuum of different degrees of vividness.
Whitehead’s importance lies in the prospects of a mediation between classical and contemporary philosophy and between philosophy. Since Whitehead meant for his philosophy to be judged in the changing situation of thought, new answers are required.
Process thought from an Indian perspective: The parallel between the Indian view of Isvara and Whitehead’s vision of the divine becomes apparent.
Bergson’s account of intuition and his method of intuitive calculus provide us a way of experiencing and describing what is there between the "frames." (Analogous to the space between motion picture frames).
Intentionality is found in process philosophy, particularly in Whitehead’s doctrine of prehension. There are substantial parallels between Whitehead and existential phenomenology.
In Whitehead’s address, "On Mathematical Concepts of the Material World," he unified geometry and physics into a single set of axioms by symbolic logic. He does not comment theologically, but his idea proposes a theory in which the mathematical abstraction suggests a model for projecting Whitehead’s understanding of God’s relation to space.
Hartshorne’s theory of Divine relativity means that God not only knows but feels.
Process theism might be judged cognitively superior over the classical type kalam model, not because it involves no paradox, but because it involves the least paradox in comparison with the formally possible theological alternatives, when all issues are considered.
Whitehead has a more fluid understand of existence than many interpreters realize caused by some terminological ambiguity in Whitehead’s terms.
Process theology’s task is to gain sensitivity to God’s voice in the cry of our downtrodden brothers. Our response to this cry may be rendered more intelligent if we understand the call within the framework of a good metaphysical system.
Buchler’s work consists of a general ontology (a metaphysics of being), a metaphysics of human utterance (a theory of human being qua human) and a theory of poetry.
The author concludes that Mordecai Kaplan was a positivist and a modernist while Whitehead was one of the earliest post-positivists and post-modernists.
The author believes that Robert H. Kimball is mistaken in believing that Whitehead is trying to reconcile realism with mediatism.
Lewis Ford gives a response to Frank Kirkpatrick’s view that "The fundamental difficulty which the process model faces is trying to retain language appropriate only to a subject (decision, purpose, intention, action) for a process which is not yet a subject but which is becoming a subject." Ford says this presupposes that it can be meaningful to analyze the becoming apart from (because prior to) the being it becomes.
Dr. Edwards declares the position of Elizabeth M.. Kraus’s The Metaphysics of Experience is impossible.. He holds that it is irreconcilable with the many texts in which Whitehead suggests that there is real succession and process in God himself.
Creation consciousness is a needed attitude on the part of Christians if, in relation to the abuse of nature, Christians are to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Process theology provides a perspective for integrating the truths of these movements, thereby encouraging creation consciousness.
Dr. Hurtubise shows that Lewis Ford’s genetic approach to Whitehead’s metaphysics rests on some key points differing from the traditional interpretations.
Dr. Lucas says that Lewis Ford possessed the requisite understanding, the confluence of intellectual talents, and most of all the patience to attempt the painstaking deconstruction and reconstruction of the pattern of authorship of Whitehead’s major work.
Although the author disagrees at some points with Ford, at the same time he pays him high tribute: Ford is one of the most penetrating theologians of our time, Christian or not.
In this lecture the author outlines the major social justice issues to which various forms of liberation theology are responding. Then he sketches, in an historical retrospect, the dead-ends of classical sacralism and of modern secularism.
Whitehead: "In the name of Liberty, we demand the Suffrage for Women."
This essay shows how three quite different criteria can be reconciled within the framework of Whitehead’s thought. Blackmur is concerned with the "poet’s version of the actual." Brooks’ thought is about the establishment of an experience that shall be structurally faithful to the complexity which is generically characteristic of reality. Sartre’s emphasis is on freedom and individual time.
Whitehead specifically directs his readers to Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, and Hume for early glimpses of his own philosophy, especially in connection with the ontological principle. The author analyzes Locke’s concept of power by examining the contexts in which that term is used in Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, thus shedding light on problems common to both Whitehead and Locke.
The author raises questions concerning the relation between logic and metaphysics in the philosophies of Hegel and Whitehead. "We may hold that the existence of God cannot be directly established by any logical argument, dialectical or otherwise; but we can insist that some objective principle of order and value is immanent in rational thought in particular, and in the cosmos as a whole."
Dr. Griffin responds to Jaegwon Kim’s Supervenience and Mind. He shows that Kim’s acceptance of a materialist version of physicallism leads to problems.
A process perspective on the language through which Matthew brings his christological witness to expression lends support to Ogden’s contention that the message of the New Testament is one that "can be formulated in complete abstraction from the event Jesus of Nazareth and all that it specifically imports."
Bernard Meland’s aesthetic ethic acknowledges the value, though limited, of the moral obligations of continuity and faithfulness to the inherited good from the structure of experience. But it does not need to insist upon any given unchanging structure not itself subject to critical inquiry.
The author addresses the problem of the nature of consciousness and the mind/brain relation. As the brain process comes to be understood objectively, all mental phenomena, including the generation of values, can be treated as objective causal agents in human decision-making.
How and where does the phenomenon of metaphor "fit" in Whitehead’s speculative scheme, and what contributions, if any, does the philosophy of organism provide for contemporary discourse on metaphor? The author maintains that the irreducible metaphor is a verbal approximation of a species of imaginative propositions.
Whitehead outlines twenty-seven items in his Categories of the Ultimate. Dr. Graham declares the ultimacy of three of these: The ‘one’ (the ontological principle), the ‘many’ (the principle of relativity), and ‘creativity’ (the principle of process).
The author attempts to elucidate what seems to be a necessary condition for the metaphysical understanding of "valid inductive inference" patterns.
The author rejects causality and "atomism" as sufficient or necessary conditions for solving the problem of induction in metapphysics.
The author replies to Gary Gutting's article "Metaphysics and Induction," stating that Gutting’s criticisms do not quite succeed in making the case. In a rejoinder, Gutting claims (and Felt seems to agree) that metaphysical theories of causal efficacy and internal relations are neither necessary nor sufficient for a solution of the problem.
The authors give a broad overview of process theology and its methodological alternatives. Whitehead and process theology, rationalist process thought, and empirical process theology.
Except for John Stuart Mill and Charles Hartshorne, process thinkers have not written much about ethics. These two bear a close relationship in their ethical insights and tell us much about what kind of experience is the end of morality.
The author examines the hermeneutics of process and Minjung theologies by comparing their major problems, goals, and methodologies. Minjung theology is concerned with Han -- the compressed feeling of suffering caused by injustice and oppression. Han helps us understand the necessity of active involvement in the world for maximizing the intensity of experience.
Both Mordecai Kaplan and Whitehead see the coherence of the idea of a non-absolute God within the framework of religious naturalism as a theological and philosophical concept. Thus, they steer a middle course between unreflective supernaturalism and reductive naturalism.
The authors compare the Indian Buddhist Nagarjuna and Whitehead. When levels of Buddhist and Western thoughts are analyzed, the religious differences are profound. Conceptually, Buddhists insist on nothingness while Westerners characteristically speak of being and think of things as having substantial reality.
Bertrand Russell has more process thought in his philosophy than most give him credit. Nevertheless, there is a conflict between Russell’s hard logic and Whiteheads process thought-- analytic versus continental; logical and linguistic versus the systematic and metaphysical; conceptual elucidation and clarification versus historical study and phenomenological description.
Dr. Moore discusses three aspects of Dr. Hartshorne method: 1. His distinction between empirical and a priori knowing; 2. His understanding of phenomenology and pragmatism; 3. His use of linguistic and logical-mathematical ways of knowing.
Dr. Ogden holds that God must be really related to animals otherwise he cannot be really related to them. He follows up with nine points of proof derived through classical logic.
The author analyzes the mystical experience of Sri Aurobindo and the "Nirvana Experience." From a Whiteheadian perspective, yogic meditation involves the silencing of symbolic reference, so that the two pure modes of perception are experienced directly.
The author writes about the power of the story in history and in imaginative construction of future possibility, and points out that narrative does not now occupy a central place in the school curriculum. She suggests the kind of narrative methodology that is needed in order to teach organically.
Dr. Earley comments on various theories of evolution and creationism, with some Whiteheadian insights.
David A. Pailin comes to the defense of Hartshorne in some of Robert Neville’s criticisms (see "Genetic Succession, Time, and Becoming," by Robert Neville). In contrast, Pailin believes Hartshorne may provide us with (or perhaps put us on the road toward) "genuine philosophic wisdom" as well as "mere metaphysical clarity".
Hartshorne’s argument, if valid, is valid only if Hartshorne’s God exists, but Hartshorne fails to prove the existence of his God.
The author suggests that animal consciousness is closer to human consciousness than Whitehead believed.
An understanding of standard mathematics conditions the doctrine of God’s immutability. Contemporary developments in mathematics affect a contemporary doctrine of God. The author works with process theology to work with these two subjects.
Einstein’s formation of the theory of relativity states that the geometry of the world is variable, its metric being a function of gravitational and electromagnetic field variables. Whitehead disagreed: Our knowledge of nature requires the uniformity of the spatial-temporal continuum which is a continuum of overlapping events, some of which are indefinitely large.
Dr. Fancher refutes Rem Edward’s polemic against Whitehead’s theory of the self as a society (see "The Human Self: An Actual Entity or a Society?" ) Fancher asserts Edward is wrong because God is not exempt from the epochal theory of time, and also, Edward’s "gap theory" criticisms rest on Newtonian time and the fallacy of simple location.
The author deals with two questions raised by Hartshorne concerning the Whiteheadian understanding of the temporal structure of God. First, whether there is be a cosmic present; and second, the temporal length of the divine present.
John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler claim contradictions in two of Whitehead’s works -- The Concept of Nature and Science and the Modern World. The author refutes their contradiction and shows it is only apparent.
Dr. Earley is concerned about issues raised by Felt against Wallack’s confounding "ontological" and "epistemological" aspects of actual entities.. "He has failed to clarify how satisfaction of subjective aim is connected with being perceived as a unitary whole."
The author examines Lee F. Werth’s critique of Whitehead’s theory of extensive connection. She adds: It’s a serious challenge to the coherence of the philosophy of organism. The attack and the doctrine attacked are so arcane and abstruse as to render them inaccessible and/or uninteresting to all but a few specialists in the philosophical community, with the end result that both are, in practice, passed over."
This is one in a series of four articles written in exchange between William Hasker and David Griffin. (See the The Problem of Evil in Process Theism and Classical Free-Will Theism by William Hasker; Traditional Free Will Theodicy and Process Theodicy: Hasker’s Claim for Parity by David Ray Griffin; "Bitten to Death by Ducks": A Reply to Griffin by William Hasker. Dr. Griffin thinks Hasker’s reaction illustrates that more people need to realize they are not limited to the choice between traditional theism and atheism.
Pilon challenges Karl Popper's criticism of Whitehead’s "wander[ing] off to such questions as the (Platonic) collectivist theory of morality." Pilon suggests that Popper leapt to this conclusion a bit too hastily.
An occasion in its lifetime passes from becoming through being into nothingness. But as it reaches its endpoint and becomes a single unified Feeling (just before it becomes nothing at all) it becomes part of an actual world composed of other occasions which have reached their endpoints simultaneously, relative to the standpoint of the new occasion whose actual world they conjointly form.
The author discusses "process" on the one hand and "process philosophy" on the other. "Process" is a sequentially structured sequence of successive stages or phases whereas "process philosophy" sees processes as central in the ontological scheme of things.
The author compares Piaget’s genetic theory of cognition with Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. He discusses Whitehead’s metaphysical theories versus Piaget’s naturalistic theory, genetic ontology versus genetic epistemology, "organism" versus "thing."
Dr. Faber reflects on the non-metaphysical nature of revelation and also on the possibility of a process-theological notion of genuine revelation.
Dr. Hurtubise details several different concepts of God as contained in Whitehead’s Process and Reality. Whitehead had not developed the distinction between a primordial and a consequent nature at an earlier stage. Even earlier, he did conceive God as nothing more than a formative element.
The author examines the contributions of Henri Bergson’s theology and claims he is the "father" of process philosophy. Bergson may have uncovered an ontological structure at the heart of any viable process stance.
Process thinking needs interaction with the field of imaginative exploration. The process perspective may serve to renew and reshape imaginative possibilities, so that we may refresh our vision of life as dramatic encounter and story.
The author explores the philosophical visions of Whitehead and Ervin Laszlo, finding similarities and some serious differences. However, they both seem to agree on a pattern of meaningful organization.
Dr. Suchocki addresses the wavering fortunes of original sin in these past few centuries and explores some of the resources of process, feminist, and black theology for a contemporary development of this doctrine.
Dr. Shepherd holds that Whiteheadian panpsychism, from the argument of parsimony, is unwarranted, but also that it is actually incompatible with what it seems responsible to take to be facts about a physical world, and should therefore be deemed false.
Aristotle took objects to be peculiar to conscious experience and the causal efficacy to be the more general factor lying at the base of consciousness. Whitehead took the subject-object structure as general and fundamental and interpreted causal efficacy in terms of it.
The author critiques various points of Whitehead’s Enquiry, yet adjudges Whitehead as contributing some of the most exciting contributions to epistemology.
Hartshorne, in 26 steps, builds up his argument for personal identity. He submits that it is in harmony with Whitehead’s view and in some respects close to historical Buddhism, whether Theravada or Mahayana.
The author attempts to clarify some important differences between persuasive power and coercive power as encountered in our daily social experiences, and then see how the differences apply in metaphysical discourse.
Lewis Ford critiques Transforming Process Theism by David Pailin. Ford discusses some Whiteheadian concepts that to Pailin seem contradictions. Also discussed is the question: Is the notion of a future subjectivity credible?
The author gives references to many tributes paid to Hartshorne: The theistic metaphysics of Hartshorne along with Whitehead is one of the great intellectual contributions of the twentieth century.
In two separate sections, Drs. Capek and Stearns agree and critique each other on their views of determinism as held by contemporary process philosophy. Is time as understood by process thought incompatible with causal determinism?
Kim responds to Griffin’s article, Materialist and Panexperientialist Physicalism: A Critique of Jaegwon Kim’s Supervienience and Mind. (See his article in www.religion-online.org.): Kim wrote his material over a long period of time, so much of his thought have changed. Hence, he does not so much answer as discuss ideas from Dr. Griffin’s comments.
Plato was in possession of two theisms, one of absolute fixity, the other of absolute mobility. The author proposes the possibility that the two Platonic theisms coalesce as complementary into One. Thus Plato can be understood as at least a prophetic quasi-dipolar theist although this is probably not possible until the process thinking of current times.
The points of contact between process thought and liberation theology. Collaborative and complementary work by process theologians and liberation theologians can contribute to the realization of South American Indian social justice.
Dr Hamrick relates process thought to issues unknown in Whitehead’s day, such as those revolving around the crisis schools face in competing with the information environment in an electronic age.
The author’s goal is to make sense of the reality which is bigger than we are and of utmost importance for the health of our body and mind.
Nature is the complexity of any order, any of the innumerable orders, the complexity of any complexes, the ordinality of any order, the ordinality that limits each complex, the complexity that pluralizes each order.
The author does not believe that Whitehead’s "creativity" best serves as the concept of ultimate or final generality.
Process inquiry must continually be nudged toward a broader understanding of its traditions, so that it is not identified simply with one particular system. If it is to follow a genuinely organismic -- not atomistic -- model of inquiry, it must campaign against limited rationalisms and against limiting specializationalism.
Dr. Lakeland compares the respective potentials of the thought of Hegel and Whitehead as philosophical support for the theology of liberation.
The evidence showing the failure of the American educational system to teach its young people what they need to know is said by the canonicists to be the result of the fragmentation and the collapse of any distinction between essential and unessential materials. An educational canon, properly understood, marries modernists and post-modernists.
The author brings together three unlikely German theologians whose notion of process is probably more Hegelian than Whiteheadian. Moltmann, Mühlen and Jüngel insist that three divine persons are intimately involved in Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection. In and through Jesus the divine life is fulfilled in creation, and creation (above all, human history) is taken up into the ongoing life of God.
Dr. Cobb introduces a series of three articles on psychotherapy: Critiquing Codependence Theory and Reimaging Psychotherapy: A Process -- Relational Exploration by Mary Elizabeth Moore; The Clinical Use of Whitehead’s Anthropology by David E. Roy; Process Relational Psychotherapy: Creatively transforming relationships by Robert Brizee.
The author presents the disciplines of philosophy, theology, and psychology as he experiences counseling through the perspective of process thought.
The articles in Volume 15, Number 1 of Process Studies comprise a special issue devoted to social philosophy. The authors have significant differences between them, but they share a broad concern from a Whiteheadian perspective. They all grapple with two great conundrums: 1. The problem of the one and the many. 2. The problem of justice.
Dr. Basinger discusses the problem of evil from three perspectives: 1. Theological determinism; 2. Free-will theism; 3. Process theology.
Whitehead probably believed that no being is omnipotent. Thus the question: is there logical conflict between the statements "God exists" and "evil exists"?
Young believes that Whitehead’s conception of god is supportive of liberation struggles because it takes contextualization seriously by making God responsive to actual conditions of the world without resort to divine coercion.
Griffin suggests that in order for Christian theology to do its job it must be totally empirical and totally rational, but also speculative, since speculation has always been inherent to Christian theology.
The author assesses process thought from a liberation theology perspective, challenging the claim by process theologians that process and liberation thought are compatible.
Dr. Edwards rejects the doctrine of the external imperceptibility of mind. There is no enduring essences of mindless spatiality or spaceless mentality.
The author explains the epistemological standpoint underlying his interest in process thought.
What is needed in this time of anti-metaphysical thinking is an outlook on reality which allows us to see the interconnectedness of our different concerns. The great danger threatening the world is to try to solve problems in isolation.
Dr. Beardslee focuses on how a Whiteheadian perspective can bring into fruitful relation the Christian hope for the transformation of social structures and the Buddhist aim of detachment which frees us from suffering.
As a biologist who was presented with a mechanistic, substance image of reality, the author found that process theology lifted the richness of human experience to a level that gave him a new perspective of care for all creation. The world became more like a life than a mechanism, a feeling through and through, from protons to people.
Dr. Limper discusses the concepts of David L. Hall’s book The Uncertain Phoenix and others of his writings, summarizing Hall’s main ideas relating to technology and technological society. He then offers a critique of a number of those ideas and of some related aspects of Hall’s thought, including his use of certain process concepts.
Whitehead has two types of process, and the understanding of the difference between these and their relationship to time is essential to understanding his conception of God.
The author responds to David Wheeler's "Toward a Process-Relational Christian Soteriology." What Wheeler says about the relationship between evangelical thought and Whiteheadian process seems uncertain. There are greater differences between these approaches than Wheeler realizes.
Subjective aspects of life such as consciousness, purpose and free will are either ignored or else attempts are made to reduce the subjective to the objective. The author suggests the laws of self organization help explain the sources of order in cosmic evolution including the origin of life.
The author’s concern is how mind and body are related and how research in neurobehavior is influenced by process cosmology.
Kant’s mature thought tests Whitehead’s insistence that experience and rationality represent a high degree of specialization and abstraction.
The author deals with Whitehead’s proposed theory of reality that provides a natural ontological basis for quantum theory. The basic elements of his theory are events that actualize, or bring into existence, certain definite relationships from among a realm of possibilities or potentialities inhering in the set of prior events.
Dr. Vanheeswijck compares the metaphysics of R.G. Collingwood and Whitehead and shows the evolution of Collingwood’s thought. In essence, Collingwood’s metaphysics is historical, while Whitehead’s is cosmological.
The author examine how Whiteheadian philosophy might complement radical feminism.
Charles Hartshorne believed that no other person and certainly no governmental body should dictate a woman’s decision about abortion. His theory of contributionism holds that the ultimate value of human life is in the contribution it makes to God.
Dr. Cobb honors Dr. Ford for his independent metaphysical reflections and that he made clear his interest was not merely the scholarly study of particular texts but the solution of basic philosophical problems.
The author discusses classical versus process theological dialogue in four central themes: 1. Being and becoming; 2. The question of personal identity; 3. The part/whole relationship; 4. The Trinity.
Whitehead’s linear theory of evolution gave identical predictions as Einstein’s, but was far simpler. There are differences between the two, however, that are exploited to the disconfirm of one or the other.
Dr. Weiss, a student of Dr. Whitehead, is interviewed by Lewis S. Ford, editor of Process Studies, about Weiss' many of his impressions: It was not professor Whitehead’s inclination to discuss philosophic problems. When he went to class, he presented his views as a kind of likely story, the result of ruminations and reflections, and not as a kind of doctrine that he wanted people to accept -- though what he did teach was his own view.
This exchange between John Cobb and Donald Sherburne concerns their continuing debate over "Regional Inclusion and the Extensive Continuum." Although Whitehead does not develop such a theory, the argument is whether such a theory would be compatible with Whitehead’s basic principle. Cobb claims in would, Sherburne claims it is an incoherent concept.
Cobb and Sherburne debate issues concerning regional inclusion and the extensive continuum. The argument is over the attributions of certain doctrines to Whitehead’s process thought.
Gunton examines Hartshorne’s idealism -- his concept that God is dipolar, and that God is the soul of the world.
The bearing of relativity theory on process theism suggests two mutually incompatible approaches to the problem of conceiving God as a temporal being. The author spells out why and suggests the advantages and drawbacks which process theists might see in each.
The author discusses some of the criticism put forth by David & Randall Basinger. He discusses I-omnipotence, free will and evil.
This is Dr. Cobb's reply to two articles: "The Christology of John Cobb." by James C. Carpenter, and "Christology Reconsidered: John Cobb’s 'Christ in a Pluralistic Age’" by Schubert M. Ogden. A major difference between Ogden and Cobb lies in their divergent views of the possibility of cognitive and existential certainty. Cobb contrasts Carpenter’s ethical concept of the quality of life Cobb’s own interest in historical "progress," which has not led to greater and greater virtue or improved quality of life but to greater possibilities for good and evil.
The author shows that Brumbaugh deals with what is one of the central difficulties of modern pedigogy, what Whitehead calls the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, where abstractions or excerpted aspects of the fuller deeper occasions are treated as actual.
The author discusses: extensive abstraction, the problem of contiguous physical objects, causal transmission and temporal dimension.
The major distinctive contributions of Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881-1983) to twentieth-century religious thought is his creative synthesis of modern Jewish nationalism with spiritual naturalism, religious humanism, and process theology.
Dr. Earley compares process philosophy with the science of chemistry -- both open-system structures which exist in an antecedent world.
Patterns not only require sensa for their physical ingression, but the "ideal realization" of the individual essences of patterns cannot exclude sensa from their very concept.
The author traces the development of four major strands in Wieman’s thought which should both clarify his relationship to the philosophy of Whitehead and illuminate the growth of his own thought. Wieman eventually expressed sharp criticism of Whitehead’s philosophy.
Dr. Morris reveals some possible implications of Whitehead’s metaphysics for social and political thought, in particular the issue of social differentiation and class structure.
Hartshorne comments on some misunderstandings Samuel Morris has of some of Hartshorne's political views, especially his changing views on pacifism.
Dr. Hartshorne responds to each of several authors, writing in Process Studies, who critique his writings.
Whitehead left much to be desired in his order of presentation. Instead of one fixed position, it becomes refracted into a whole series of positions, each leading to the next. Sometimes this sort of analysis is faulted as tending to undercut the systematic unity of the whole. An Appendix helpfully lists eight metaphysical principles that were presented by Whitehead in his classroom lectures at Harvard, October 1 and 4, 1927.
Hartshorne believes that Plato is the most underrated of all philosophers unless it’s Bergson. Aristotle is the most overrated of all unless it’s Kant. He discusses the differences between these thinkers.
Space is symmetrical in its mathematical, abstract form: -- isotropic, static, one-modal. But concrete process finds space entangled with acting entities and with time, and in this concrete domain, the symmetries of abstract fields do not exactly match the facts of location.
Professor Bracken relies upon the careful work done by Lucas in the concept of Spirit in Hegel’s philosophy and the concept of society in Whitehead’s thought to illuminate each another’s potentialities for development in the direction of still another, more comprehensive process-oriented system of thought.
The process view has difficulty making sense out of the notion of a subject when the concepts appropriate to a subject are applied only to the becoming which produces a subject. The process view separates being and becoming to the extent that what is still becoming is not yet a being which is an abstraction.
Lori Krafte challenges Ford and Suchocki in "A Whiteheadian Reflection on Subjective Immortality" concerning the subjectifying and objectifying an experience.
The author is concerned with the ontological basis for subjectivity. He recounts Whitehead’s various theories about it. Becoming is identified with subjectivity, being with objectivity. Becoming has primary existence, being has derivative existence.
Does Whitehead’s metaphysics provide adequate support for his claim of "substance within substance?" To what extent is Whitehead in opposition to Aristotle on this subject? The author believes Whitehead provides adequate support of his assertions concerning this immanence.
It is difficult to answer what time is because of the paradoxes of being and non-being, the experiential and emotional weightiness of the subject and the metaphysical centrality of time in understanding such things as substances, events, causation, and consciousness. Dr. Miller explores especially the existence of a plurality of sometimes discordant temporal concepts.
To Whitehead, the nature of God is primordial as a unified actual entity. As a result of God’s prehension of the world he is consequent as a unified actual entity. And as a unified actual entity, God is "superjective" in that he is present to and immanent in the world.
Dr. Nobo believes Dr. Ford’s genetic approach must be given up for a more systematic approach.
Dr. McHenry investigates the structural similarity between Whitehead’s celebrated work with Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica.
Classical theologians typically limit self-determining (free) creatures on this earth to humans (or perhaps also to certain higher animals), while process theologians typically would affirm that creative self-determination is characteristic of all beings.
The author follows the correspondence between Edgar S. Brightman and Chalres Hartshorne over a number of years. They tried to converge on fundamental issues, but there were some basic differences. In particular in their epistemology, the two were separated by the ancient perspectives of monism and dualism.
Whitehead’s language is not Buddhist as such, and not even meaningful within a Buddhist context. But the relation of mutual and total coinherence which it establishes between God and the World can be seen to be a purely religious relation. It is grounded in a religious vision, and this ground is in fundamental continuity with Mahayana Buddhism and more in continuity with Buddhism than with any religious language in the Christian world.
Whatever we do either creates the framework for continuing the grand adventure of life and mind on this planet, or sets the stage for its termination.
Dr. Carpenter discusses two general problems faced by John Cobb: 1. Accounting for God’s presence in any person without displacing some aspect of that person’s humanity. 2. Accounting for God’s unique presence in Jesus.