Mutual Immanence, just what is this?

dreambat13 · **Joined:** Wed Dec 29, 2004 5:21 pm **Posts:** 39

DM:

Quote:

In the essay from Nobo you quote, there is no mention of anticipatory or anticipate or anticipation, at least according to my search engine.

Nobo is not *quite* as negligent in mentioning aim in his "Whitehead and the Quantum Experience". Not sure if this is online.

From Physics and Whitehead, 235 SUNY:NY Ed: Eastman & Keeton
chapter by Nobo:

Quote:

Every subject makes both kinds of decision because the relevant possibilities it entertains have to do not only with its own final definitness, but also with the role its causally objectified superject may play in occasions in its relevant future (PR, 27). Indeed, the subject's immanent decisions aim at intensity in its own subjective form, and its transcendent decisions aim at intensity in the subjective form of occasions in its relevant future (PR, 27). The relevant furture consists of those occasions anticipated by the present subject "by reason of the real potentiality for them to be derived from itself" (PR 27). Striclty speaking, therefore, the subject can only realize what I term the immanent compenent of its subjective aim; for the aim at intensity in the relevant future--the subjective aim's transcendent component -- can be realized only by the descendant, or descendants, of the subject. In fact, since the immanent component is itself twofold, even the simplest subjective aim has three components: an immanent componenet inherited from an immediate ancestor; an autonomously decided transcendent component to be realized by an immediate descendant; and, also autonomously decided, another immanent component mediating between the other two components. More complex subjective aims may involve a series of two or more descendants. In the anticipation of descendants, what the subject prehends are not the descendants as such, but the potenitality from which and by which such descendants will arise. Also phrehended as inherent in that potentiality is the necessity that its own superject be causally objectified in, and subjectively conformed to, by them (IS 242-44).

bold mine, italics nobo.

By the way, I'm in no way defending Nobo, I'm just trying to move along absorbing as much as I can and holding as much contrast as possible. It appears that Nobo, as you said DM, has a very limited view of what one occasion can hold about the future.

Nobo continues 235-236:

Quote:

Each occasion's generic necessity to anticipate at least one immediate descendant is what Whitehead means by physical aniticipation (IS, 243). The initiation and locus of an occasion's becoming is determined by its being physically anticipated by at least one immediate ancestor. The anticipating occasion is then, in the stricktest sense of the term, the effecient cause of the when and where of its immediate descendent's existence; for it is the completion of the anticipating occasion that immediately elicits the initiation of its descendent's becoming at the anticipated locus. All other occasions in the descendent's metaphysical past will be efficient causes of its objective content, but not of its origination then and there. Thus, "[the] whole antecedent world conspires to produce a new occasion. But some one occasion in an important way condistions the formation fo a successor" (MT, 164)

... Physical anticipation is a special mode of anticipatory objectification, the later being the manner in which the metaphysical potentiality for all future occasions achieves objective reality within an occasion's experience.

So, does that mean Nobo thinks AE use Eternal Objects to implant the future into past AE?

dBat

dreambat13 · **Joined:** Wed Dec 29, 2004 5:21 pm **Posts:** 39

Bo, I see from the chart how some or many AE in the future or horizonal past might find their way into a new AE, but I'm missing how ALL AE are mutually immanent in this model.

Thanks, dBat

BoHerlin · **Posted:** Wed Jan 12, 2005 2:43 am

Peter Mutnick wrote:

Quote:

Do you mean "the existence of enduring objects" rather than "the existence of eternal objects" in the above? Eternal objects, according to Whitehead are truly eternal - they are Platonic ideas and pure potentials that exist prior to the actual universe or anything actual.

I meant 'eternal objects'. I haven't read Nobo, but I saw in the article dBat mentioned a reference to p. 76 in PR. There Whitehead says:

"The antithetical terms 'universals' and 'particulars' are the usual words employed to denote respectively entities which nearly, though not quite, correspond to the entities here termed 'eternal objects', and 'actual entities', [...] The ontological principle and the wider doctrine of universal relativity, on which the present metaphysical is founded, blur the sharp distinction between what is universal and what is particular."

It seems here, I think, as if Whitehead didn't regard eternal objects as being "equally unchangeable" as the Ideas of Plato. But, of course, he says that the universals only nearly correspond to eternal objects. So perhaps the truly eternal nature of 'eternal objects' must remain a question of faith -- which I do acknowledge.

dBat, according to The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (TI) "the state vector of the quantum mechanical formalism is a real physical wave with spacial extent" (section 3.4 in: http://mist.npl.washington.edu/npl/int_ ... I_toc.html ). It seems to be consistent with my (deliberately very rough) model if you change his geometrical time (including "atemporal transactions") to a process time (including "self-reflections" in "free time") by placing a horisontal line "of the present" in the diagrams of TI and let it move upwards into the (still unformed) future.
As the SV potentially involves any AE in a "transaction", resulting in a "collapse" of the SV and the creation of a standing wave as a part of an eternal (but created) network behind the entire universe (my "tree"), I think this makes room for a universal mutual immanence.
(The SV may pass the "line of the present" and immediately -- or extremely fast -- continue into the "future", i.e. my "original chaos".)

I am speculating here in the hope to contribute to a creative exchange of ideas -- and maybe receive necessary corrections.

Dr. Mutnick · **Posted:** Wed Jan 12, 2005 7:07 am

Interesting analogy, but I think that's all it is, because the waves going backward and forward in time are just mechanical - they do NOT imply any mutual immanence. If so, how do you envision that they do. Cramer's theory itself, like most physics theories, is purely mechanical, with no subjectivity or capacity for mutual immanence. That is the whole point.

BoHerlin · **Posted:** Wed Jan 12, 2005 8:17 am

Yes, Peter, I realize that the retarded and the advanced waves, as normally regarded, are just mechanical or abstract. I was thinking of a possible different interpretation of Cramer's Transactional Interpretation -- to make it living, so to speak -- by introducing a process concept of time. If you do this as I proposed above, the past changes to a still existing active "past" and the future to an unformed "future", or an original chaos (which may, perhaps, correspond to Cahills "quantum foam"). The historical past will then be just an abstraction (possible to describe by the help of a fifth dimension of "recorded time", as I show in diagram 5 in my pdf-paper).

Dr. Mutnick · **Posted:** Wed Jan 12, 2005 9:15 pm

dreambat13 wrote:

Nobo continues 235-236:

Quote:

Thus, "[the] whole antecedent world conspires to produce a new occasion. But some one occasion in an important way conditions the formation of a successor" (MT, 164)

If we return this to its proper context, we can discern the intended meaning.

Whitehead wrote:

"How can one event be the cause of another? In the first place, no event can be wholly and solely the cause of another event. The whole antecedent world conspires to produce a new occasion. But some one occasion in an important way conditions the formation of a successor. How can we understand this conditioning? ... Life lies below this grade of mentality. Life is the enjoyment of emotion ... The emotion transcends the present in two ways. It issues from, and it issues towards. It is received, it is enjoyed, and it passes along, from moment to moment. ... The unity of emotion, which is the unity of the present occasion, is a patterned texture of qualities, always shifting as it is passed into the future. The creative activity aims at preservation of the components and at preservation of intensity."

So, it is not true that a new occasion requires in general a single important antecedent. That is so only when we are trying to understand a chain of causation, wherein one thing leads to another, and so on. That is called in Buddhism pratitya-samutpada, the chain of causation. In Buddhism, it is the Second Noble Truth of the cause of suffering. Whitehead takes a more Hinduistic view of it, wherein the chain of causation is indulged in and even enjoyed. If you must suffer, learn to enjoy it, or so the logic goes. Historically the order is reversed - first we may enjoy emotional ties, but later we realize that they are a fundamental cause of suffering.

In any case, Whitehead's theory is that chains of causation, wherein one event leads to another, and so on, are essentially strands of emotion. If we were to define emotion as energy-in-motion, then we would see the connection to Whitehead's other doctrine that all types of events arise through the transformation of energy inherent in actual occasions.

In the passage quoted by Nobo, Whitehead is intending to put a limit on linear causation, not to suggest that all causation must be linear or have a dominant linear component. I will be getting The Interpretation of Science tomorrow, and I am eager to see if there is any substantiation there for Nobo's doctrine. I do not find any substantiation in the Modes of Thought.

Mutual Immanence, just what is this?

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