I am taking a break for a moment from the Process and Reality review to bring a review of another book, this one by Walter Wink, called The Powers That Be.

There is much good in this book. Wink, perhaps better than any scholar, understands the spiritual implications of violence on the human psyche. He takes the idea of spiritual reality seriously, addressing it using many of the same resources as I have used in my own spiritual development. When, on page 19 he lists the Process philosophers Whitehead, Hartshorne, Cobb, and Griffin as examples of people who speak his language, I was impressed. But he kept going to mention some of my other inspirations: Carl Jung, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and even Morton Kelsey. I was thinking, “right on, brother, we’ll be on the same page.”

Well…we should have been on the same page, but it didn’t quite work out that way. Wink truly does understand the problem that violence causes. But he has several ideas that I don’t think work very well.

The first idea is his idea of angels and demons. Now, most modern people cannot accept the idea of angels and demons without some qualifications. The ancient idea of angels and demons as “beings out there” seems rather fantastic to most modern sensibilities. So Wink, like most scholars who take the idea of angels and demons seriously, reinterprets them in a more modern light. So far, so good. But in doing so he falls prey to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.

Wink essentially argues that all institutions take on a life of their own, they have a “spirit” that is independent of the people that embody that institution. He draws heavily on Revelation for this insight, saying that it was meditation of the angels of the churches in the opening chapters of Revelation that caused his epiphany on the true nature of angels and demons. In his view, an “angel” is the spirit of any institution that is in harmony with its purpose. A “demon” is any spirit of an institution that is out of harmony with its purpose. But what can this mean? Institutions don’t have any real existence. They aren’t real, they don’t exist except in minds. They are abstractions. If there is “demonic” or “angelic” influence on these institutions, it can be occurring in one place and one place only: in the minds of the people who embody the institution. That is the proper place to look for angelic or demonic influence. Wink’s treatment falls prey to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, in a way that Morton Kelsey’s treatment, (as an example,) doesn’t. If the angelic and the demonic exist, they are archetypes, not corporate spirits that suffuse abstract institutions.

Another point of disagreement with Wink is he does not, in my opinion, fully realize the nature of what he calls “the Powers.” He believes that the Powers can be reformed: that a demonic power can become an angelic power by recalling it to its true purpose. He even gives examples, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the death of apartheid in South Africa. But this is an idealistic reading of history. The nations of Eastern Europe and South Africa cannot today be called “angelic” by any stretch of the imagination. They could only be called angelic in a relative sense, in that they are less bad than they had been. They certainly can’t be called “good.” So his examples fail.

Wink detests violence. He calls it our national religion. His heart is in the right place. But he does not, in my opinion, sufficiently realize the true nature of power. He does not seem to realize that power, by its very nature, is violent. One cannot reform a state to become good because it is the nature of states to impose their rule violently on their “subjects.” One cannot reform a corporation to become good because it is the nature of corporations to claim exclusive ownership over the means of production, thus locking people into wage slavery. There is absolutely no way to reform the Powers because the powers are inherently rooted in violence. They are demonic by nature. A realistic view of the demonic would say that the demonic has expressed itself in archetypes that have caused people to build inherently oppressive and violent structures. There can be no synthesis of these structures with liberty and justice. The structures and institutions themselves are tools of the demonic. They are not good structures and institutions that have just gone wayward. The structures themselves have no role other than to allow some men to control and subjugate others. There can be no reform, only breaking down these structures and building alternatives to them.

The purpose of the Church is not, as Wink says, that of “recalling these Powers to their divine vocation.” No. The Church is an end-around those powers. It is an alternative to them. The Church exists for the sole purpose of undermining the powers by presenting nonviolent alternatives to them. The Church is subversive. It doesn’t seek to reform. It seeks to eliminate.

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This topic keeps seeming to come up over and over and over again.

In my philosophy of religion class, this question was raised on the final (as a bonus question):  “Given the long history of violence in the name of God among all three religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), what can an individual within the religion do to counteract this phenomenon?  If you belong to one of the three religions, please express this answer in terms of what you can do within your own religion, family, etc.”

My answer was that Christians such as myself need to take on the Bible.  The Bible gives competing images of God.  Sometimes, we are told that God is a loving God who gives good gifts even to wicked men.  Then, on other occasions, we are told that God is a jealous God who will order extermination of his people if they don’t live up to his standards.  I wish it were as simple as saying that “the God of the Old Testament is vengeful and angry, whereas the God of the New Testament is loving and kind.”  That would make it simpler, but unfortunately, that is not an accurate description.  Both Testaments present conflicting portrayals of God. At times he portrayed as loving and kind, and on other occasions he presents with a deep pathology. The pathology of God is more prominent in the Old Testament, but is also present in the NT.  Consider the book of Revelation, which portrays Christ as returning to “tread the winepress of God’s anger,” by trampling people like grapes. Or the Judgment scenes in the Gospel, which portray Christ in the role of judge, damning some people to eternal destruction.

Unless people are willing and able to take on the idea that the Bible is “the word of God,” then people have no way of reconciling these two competing portrayals of God, and end up with schizophrenic religion.  Conservatives, of course, are not willing to take on the Bible, because they are the champions of the “dictation theory of Scripture,” also known as “inerrancy.”  But what is surprising is that even theological liberals are reticent to take on the Bible.  Problems with the Bible are swept away with flights of intellectual fancy that convince no one but those liberals who have their heads in the sand.

I find this confusing.  Why won’t liberals help take on the Bible?  Why won’t liberals stand up for God’s honor by denouncing the primary stain on God’s honor, the equation of God with the Bible?  Why is it that anytime anyone suggests that war must be declared on the Bible (or at least those parts of it that portray God in a vile way,) theological liberals get squeamish and start talking about “contextualizing” Scripture, “reading it through a historical lens,” etc.  Essentially trying to whitewash the fact that the Bible contains significant immorality.  Why can’t we say that?  Why can’t we rub that Conservatives face in that until they have no recourse but to denounce their belief in an inerrant Scripture?  It isn’t certainly due to any lack of ammunition.  It is simply a squeamishness that I personally find inexplicable.

The fact is this:  Idolatry consists of making something that is not God equal to God.  By that test, the doctrine of inerrancy is an idolatry. And look at the havoc that Bibliolatry has wrought:  sexism, slavery, xenophobia, justification of violence, homophobia, and religious exclusivism.  It has divided, not united.  As Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer says:

In a world being torn apart by violence, there is no more urgent task than to counter the Bible’s frequent and nauseating portraits of a ruthless and violent deity.  The cruelty of God, however, is a problem that no one is willing to face squarely, including Christian interpreters. (Jesus Against Christianity, p.21)

So let it begin.  From henceforth, I, as a Christian and in the name of Christ, declare war on the Bible.

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Speculative philosophy attempts to build an entire philosophy from speculative concepts. That, as was mentioned in the previous section, is the rational side.  The entire scheme is tested as to its veracity on the empirical side.

But there are dangers awaiting this verification process.  Some of these are the result of our language.  Our language can never be much more than a set of symbols which approach reality, but do not touch it. With simple concepts, the language can be a fairly close approximation.  If I say the word “apple”, you will have a rough idea of what I mean.  You might picture a red delicious apple whereas I was trying to convey a granny smith, but I should be able to use adjectives to make my meaning even more precise, such that you are able to picture in your mind roughly the same concept that originated in my mind.  The word is an effective symbol.  But some words and phrases becomes “stretched” - the word itself covers too much ground, and precision can be given only by explanatory paragraphs, if at all.  Often times, our language becomes nothing more than a set of metaphors:  the language itself fails to do complete justice to the thought.

“There is no first principle which is in itself unknowable, not to be captured in a flash of insight,” Whitehead assures us.  But it requires an “imaginative leap.”  The words themselves cannot quite get us there.  This is as true for the person who originates the thought as it is for the one trying to understand it.  The words are just guideposts along the way, at some point the listener must make the same conceptual leap of understanding as the speaker.

How do we go about thinking about our world?  The world is our seat of experience.  We don’t trouble ourselves to try to explain phenomena that we have not experienced, nor are we capable of doing so.  Observation thus becomes the point of origin for all thoughts.  “Experience is antecedent to knowledge,” I am fond of saying.  Thus, while I insist that process philosophy is a hybrid of rationalism and empiricism, it finds its primary emphasis in empiricism, for the rational side of process philosophy will proceed from thinking about observations.  Our devil is in our details.  We are not aware of reality as a whole, rather, we have immediate experience of certain details which constitute part of reality.  I observe a tree in a meadow, with a deer in the distance on a bright cloudless day.  I observe the sun, the deer, the meadow, the tree, and myself.  I do not observe elephants or porcupines or clouds. What I observe is only a part of the experience, but at the same time I correlate that immediate experience to previous experiences.  Yesterday, I could not see the tree in the same meadow through the fog. Nor could I see the sun.  I believe I am at the same place today as I was at yesterday, but there are differences between the days. And those differences become important to understanding my world.  The fog is sometimes there and sometimes not, and when it is there, it changes the entire experience.

The “metaphysical first principles”, however, are not directly observable in such a fashion; hence empirical scientific induction fails us in understanding them.  The metaphysical first principles are always present. They are not like the fog, which is present sometimes and absent other times, such that I can analyze the differences and attempt to understand.   I cannot directly observe the metaphysical first principles, I can only observe their effects on the world. But I can never set up a control group that is not bound by them. Everywhere I go, the metaphysical first principles will be there. They transcend the observer, not vice versa. They are larger than me, beyond my field of vision.  It takes a creative leap of the imagination, rather than observation, to understand them.

Whitehead describes metaphysical speculation as an airplane, rather than a scientific process:  It begins grounded in reality and observation, takes off on a flight of imagination, but then lands again in reality, tested as to fitness of the scheme.  Imagination, he says, “supplies the differences which the direct observation lacks.”  In other words, I can imagine a different world, one in which some certain metaphysical first principle doesn’t apply, and then attempt to imagine how everything would be affected.

Speculation is not a free-for-all.  The imagination roams, but where it roams is grounded in certain rules, rules which must be adhered to if success is to be achieved.  These are the previously mentioned categories of logic and coherence.  The metaphysical principles must make sense.  They must presuppose each other, and in the same way must not break the rules of logic.  The entire system must be plausible, understandable, and conform to its own internal rules of relation.  It may not be inconsistent, or posit contradictory principles.

Speculation will flow from some particular problem, but the true test will be not whether it solves that particular problem, but whether it remains successful when applied to other problems.  If the philosophy truly represents the valid metaphysical first principles, it must be workable for all reality, as all reality adheres to the same metaphysical first principles.

Whitehead gives certain examples of the idea of coherence, and how it historically tends to ultimately undermine the established and orthodox philosophical systems.  These examples, I think, are a bit superfluous to the discussion.  What does seem important is to understand that Whitehead sees his philosophy of organism to be in continuity with Spinoza’s scheme.  I think Spinoza is a very important thinker in the train of process thought. Along the way in these notes, I will be highlighting the main thinkers that, in my estimation anyway, have contributed to the development of Process thought.  These will sometimes differ from Whitehead’s list.  I consider Spinoza to be a much more influential and substantial thinker to the development of Process than I do Locke, for instance, despite the emphasis that Whitehead gives to Locke.

How does Process differ from Spinoza?  First, Whitehead says it abandons the subject/predicate form of thought. (This is debatable, I think, whether Spinoza’s philosophy need be expressed in subject/predicate form, but that criticism is beyond the scope of this essay.) Whitehead also attempts to downgrade the importance given to the manifestations of Spinoza’s modes, saying that although understanding them increases our understanding of the metaphysical first principles, it does not in and of itself lead us to a “higher grade of reality.”  I am, frankly, uncertain which of Spinoza’s metaphysical propositions he is critiquing by this statement.  I do think that a good case could be made that Process also differs from Spinoza’s formulation in that it is indeterministic whereas Spinoza’s scheme is deterministic. I think the main difference between the two is that Spinoza’s scheme is static whereas process is dynamic:  Spinoza still thought in terms of substance, material, etc.  His world was matter, whereas the world of process is primarily motion, events, experiences, with matter being secondary.  There are thus differences in emphasis, and I think the dipolar nature of actual entities in process is a direct reflection of this critical difference between process and spinoza, but I digress at the moment, and return to Whitehead.

Whitehead claims that every philosophy must have its ultimate nature, which expresses itself in whatever forms or embodiments exist, and is capable of expression only in these forms. For Spinoza (as for the idealists,) that reality is God, (which incidentally explains why God has no personality in Spinoza’s depiction.) Whitehead envisions God as the primordial manifestation of an even more subtle ultimate form:  creativity. This will create the metaphysical basis for freedom, for this creativity will manifest itself, of course, in God, but also in the other expressions of reality, in each of us.

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What is speculative philosophy? Why was it so important to Whitehead to defend this concept? Process and Reality begins with this simple statement: “This course of lectures is designed as an essay in Speculative Philosophy. Its first task must be to define ’speculative philosophy,’ and to defend it as a method productive of important knowledge.”

In the grand scheme of things, speculative philosophy is merely the attempt to create a system that explains what reality is, at its most fundamental level. Whitehead says that this philosophy needs to fulfill several key tasks. First, it must be “coherent, logical, necessary.” In other words, it needs to make sense and to be internally consistent. Second, it needs to explain everything in our experience. If I have a toothache, it needs to be able to explain that. If I dream, it needs to be able to explain that. If there is a gigantic elephant sleeping in my front yard, it needs to explain that. Since speculative philosophy explains the nature of reality, there shouldn’t be anything in our experience that would contradict it, or that in principle at least could not be explained by the philosophy. Whitehead’s words are “applicable” and “adequate.” The philosophy to be applicable to a certain item of experience means that it explains the item. Of course, not all items might be explained by the philosophy fully, but it should at least be “adequate,” which means that there is nothing that the philosophy is ipso facto incapable of explaining.

Whitehead mentions coherence as the principle that the fundamental ideas presuppose each other, so that in isolation they don’t make much sense. This takes a little getting used to, because we are so accustomed to isolating questions, but speculative philosophy attaches to reality only as a complete system. The system is tested as to its fitness for explaining the world only insofar as the completed system matches up with what we experience. If the completed system explains time and matter and energy and elephants and dreams and consciousness and every other fact of our experience, that is the test of its adequacy. The test of its adequacy is not how well we can verify each doctrine through the scientific method. When dealing with ultimate reality, the scientific method is insufficient; we simply have no way to test the individual doctrines of a speculative scheme in isolation. They are tested by cohering to each other, and then matching up to reality. “The principle of resonance” I call it in SWB. The fact is this is why it is “speculative”, because the system has no other standard of verification other than its completeness as a system for explaining reality.

So Whitehead notes that there is a rational and an empirical side to speculative philosophy. The rational side tries to come up with a coherent, internally consistent “theory of everything.” The empirical side tests the philosophy to see whether that “theory of everything” matches up with reality as experienced. Since the only test of veracity is empirical, it would seem to me that no stone should be left unturned - if it is a true theory of everything, it must explain everything. A theory of everything that explains only 90% of reality is 100% wrong, in the sense that it must have at least one false premise.

The last paragraph of this section is also relevant: “The doctrine of necessity in universality means that there is an essence to the universe which forbids relationship beyond itself, as a violation of its rationality. Speculative philosophy seeks that essence.” In other words, if I understand him right, we cannot know everything. We know only a tiny fraction of what can be known. If we were to understand everything that we dealt with, we would transcend it. It is the fact that we are part of a larger picture that necessitates the fact that we cannot see the whole picture. But by observing the “texture” of the painting, the field that is in our vision, we can come up with an idea of what the whole picture probably is.

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“A pacifism born of ideology rather than love can be just as cruel and sadistic as a violent ideology.”

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I have a confession: I almost never read Prefaces to books. It is usually pointless to read the preface; after all, if there is something important to be said, it will be said in the body of the work. And while some people like to read prefaces to understand the direction that the book will take or the structure of the book, I tend to feel that if you don’t have a pretty good idea of what happened after reading the book, there’s very little that could be said in a preface to change that.

I’m not sure why I read the Preface to Process and Reality last night. I had the book with me for dinner, and was preparing my notes on the first chapter when I got the brilliant idea to read the editors’ notes. I think I was curious about why there was a need for a corrected edition. After I was done reading the editors’ notes, I just kept reading through the preface. And I’m glad I did, because the Preface to Process and Reality is actually helpful.

In the editors’ notes, Griffin and Sherburne note that Process and Reality “is highly technical and far from easy to understand.” That would be a bit of an understatement. I had always assumed that this was so for two main reasons. 1) Whitehead creates much of his own vocabulary, so learning process can be a bit like learning a new language. Before one can understand the concepts, one must first understand the language, but Whitehead tends to use the new language without much explanation of the new term, why it was coined, etc. 2) These are the Gifford lecture series, so they are not necessarily organized the same as an introductory explication might be. The lectures were developed after Process philosophy had already been developed, so the book presupposes that the reader is already familiar with key process ideas.

After reading the preface, I believe there is a third reason why Process and Reality is such a difficult read: Whitehead approached his writing the same way he approached his philosophy. That will require a bit of explanation.

One of Whitehead’s main critiques of modern philosophy is that it is not holistic. It tries to answer specific questions divorced from their context. Whitehead points out that it is not possible to divorce anything from its world, such that any attempt to provide answers divorced from context will skew the answers. To this end, one of the main goals of Process and Reality is to provide a defense for “speculative philosophy.” Without spending too much time on speculative philosophy at the moment (as this will be discussed in the first chapter), speculative philosophy is essentially a way of doing philosophy that attempts to provide an accounting for the ultimate nature of things. What is reality, at the most fundamental level? This way of doing philosophy had fallen into disrepute by the early 20th century, a victim of what Durant calls the “hijacking” of philosophy by epistemology. Recovering speculative philosophy from its aura of disrepute was one of Whitehead’s main goals. But as one develops a theory of the ultimate nature of reality and tries to connect that theory to the rest of the world, one sometimes comes head to head with opposing viewpoints in the different questions which are normally answered in isolation. In writing his book, Whitehead chose to take these issues on one by one. Thus, he never really develops any of his doctrines at length. All of Process’ doctrines are developed bit by bit in the context of the particular discussion where they apply. Whitehead explains thusly:

Thus, the unity of treatment is to be looked for in the gradual development of the scheme, in meaning and in relevance, and not in the successive treatment of particular topics. For example, the doctrines of time, of space, of perception, and of causality are recurred to again and again, as the cosmology develops. In each recurrence, these topics throw some new light on the scheme or receive some new elucidation. At the end, in so far as the enterprise has been successful, there should be no problem of space-time, or of epistemology, or of causality, left over for discussion. (emphasis mine)

Without discussing the relative merits of this particular approach, I will say that it is … well, different. It can be a bit like meeting someone who is intensely interested in politics, but who never tells you what his political beliefs are. You are left trying to discover his political beliefs by the random comments he makes on world events and political developments.

In his Preface, Whitehead goes into the particular structuring scheme of Process and Reality. I will spare you those details, as they do not relate to an understanding of Process Philosophy, and as the particulars of each section will be explained within my commentary on the relevant section. I do think it is important to understand the main goals of Process and Reality. In a sense, these goals are reactionary, because Whitehead developed these goals in critique of prevailing sentiments within the philosophical community in the early decades of the 20th century. As those prevailing sentiments have largely gone unchanged, the goals of Process and Reality are surprisingly relevant today.  I should point out that the goals here are largely negative.  In other words, Whitehead is critical of the quoted philosophical ideas.

Goals

1) “The distrust of speculative philosophy.” I have already commented on this, but Whitehead was a major opponent of the prevailing philosophical sentiment that the ultimate nature of reality was a taboo subject for philosophy. Whitehead felt that any discipline worth doing was grounded in some form of speculative philosophy, whether those ideas about the ultimate nature of reality were explicit or implicit. He felt that by presenting those ideas explicitly, they were more accountable and could be improved through criticism, and that if the ideas were not presented explicitly, they would not go away they would simply be implicitly affirmed and thus not subjected to criticism.

2) “The trust in language as an adequate expression of propositions.” Whiteheads position, to be elaborated on more fully in the next chapter, is that language cannot be an adequate description of reality, and that in trying to make it so we expose ourselves to philosophical errors. I think the best example of this in Whitehead’s work is the fallacy that Whitehead calls “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness,” which is essentially the fallacy of presuming that an abstraction is more real than it actually is. From personal experience in dialogue with others, I see this philosophical blunder everywhere. And what’s sad is that it is often not recognized as a philosophical blunder at all, even in academia.

3) “The mode of philosophical thought which implies, and is implied by, the faculty-psychology.” Ok, this takes a bit of explaining, and I may not be doing justice to the idea. The “faculty-psychology” is simply the idea that the mind is composed of separate “faculties”, (hence the name.) So people who have this view will think of the “emotions” as distinct from the “intelligence” as distinct from the “will”. One of the things that I’ve written consistently, (although, to be honest, I’ve struggled trying to explain how it is so,) is that mind is inseparable from all that it does. One cannot have a mind devoid of intelligence (however primitive that intelligence might be,) or a mind devoid of emotion or will. It is a contradiction in terms. I’ve dealt with this idea briefly in my blog here, in a little piece I called “the Philosophy of Data”: http://calebjohnson.org/blog/?p=383

4) “The subject-predicate form of expression.” At the risk of defining Whitehead’s views through someone else’s work, I am going to make a book recommendation here, at this point, to emphasize Whitehead’s point. The subject-predicate form of expression is critiqued very well in a book by Martin Buber (a Jewish Rabbi) called I and Thou. Buber’s point, (and I think probably Whitehead’s too,) is that we have a choice: we can view the world either as I and IT (where the world and other entities in it are things.) Or I can view it as I and THOU (where the world and the other entities in it are other experiencing subjects.) Most people probably have a hybrid view, where they view the world mostly in an I and IT way while reserving “I and THOU” for their dealings with other human beings, particularly other human beings with whom they enjoy close relationships. But Whitehead is critical of the entire I and IT scheme, because his philosophy teaches the doctrine that all actual entities have experience at the most fundamental level, and are thus subjects not objects. (Actual entities will be defined in a later chapter.)

5) “The sensationalist doctrine of perception.” This is a primarily empiricist epistemic doctrine, although you do sometimes see the sensationalist doctrine of perception conceded by rationalists as well. In a nutshell, the sensationalist doctrine of perception is the idea that all that we perceive in the world comes to us from our five senses, and that without this sensory input we have no idea of a world. The conclusions of this doctrine of perception find their ultimate explication in Hume, who points out that we can therefore have no idea of causation or of an external world, and the idea reached a further apex when Santayana pointed out that it leads, not only to solipsism, but to “solipsism of the present moment”, where we can have no idea of time. (See Whitehead’s goal #9) Whitehead was critical of the sensationalist doctrine of perception, viewing the information received through the senses as being derivative of a more fundamental mode of perception. More later, as this is a big idea. =)

6) “The doctrine of vacuous actuality.” As far as I know, Whitehead coined the term “vacuous actuality” to describe the prevailing sentiment. In a way, this is connected to goal #4. But I’m getting ahead of myself. A vacuous actuality is a piece of “dead” matter. By dead I don’t mean that it was alive and died, I mean that it is lifeless, never had experience in the first place. Picture a clump of iron ore. Most of us don’t view iron ore as being a subject that has its own internal emotional makeup and experience of the world. So that view would be a “vacuous actuality” - an actuality devoid of all experience. Whitehead didn’t believe this was a possible metaphysical state for any actual entity.

7) I’m going to skip # 7 because I think it is pretty well covered by goal numbers 1 and 4 and 6, and simply relates to a particular expression of those views by Immanuel Kant. (Think his numena and phenomena divide here, which leads to a deal of agnosticism about the ultimate nature of things.) All you need to know was that Whitehead was ‘gainst it. =)

8 ) “Arbitrary deductions in ex absurdo arguments.” Take a statement, any statement. I like “the sky is blue.” How do you prove it? One way is ex absurdo. You negate the statement, and when the negated statement is proved false, you presume the truth of the original statement. “The sky is not blue” = false. Ergo, the sky is blue. Ding ding ding, we have a winner. The problem can sometimes come in as a result of using language as if it has precise mathematical meaning rather than being an approximation of reality. You may get an ex absurdo argument that is logically meaningful, but has no real alignment with reality. See goal # 2

9) “Belief that logical inconsistencies can indicate anything else than some antecedent errors.” For this, lets go back to the sensationist doctrine of perception. What was Hume’s solution to his empiricism which denied that we can have any idea of causation or an external world? Did he become a solipsist, as his worldview would logically dictate? Of course not. He presented a dual scheme wherein he admitted that his doctrine was true, but at the same time admitted certain ideas “in practice”, in order to make life workable. Whitehead would say that when Hume’s worldview had reached the point where Hume himself could not agree with the logical conclusions of his doctrines, Hume should have realized that there was an antecedent error in his argument (in this case, the idea that sensation is our only means of perception.)

Ok, this section is done for now. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to work on the first section of chapter one tonight. One thing I need to be very clear on though: I am NOT an expert on Whitehead. This series represents my efforts to understand Whitehead and to put his ideas into my own words. Please do not take my explication of Whitehead as the authority here. I’m just an undergrad student, and while I hope to eventually go on to graduate work in the field, these notes are not definitive statements on Whitehead’s positions, they merely reflect my current understanding.

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At the risk of biting off way more than I can chew, both intellectually and in terms of what I have time to accomplish, I’m going to be preparing some notes on Whitehead’s Process and Reality.  What the hell, I have a couple weeks before the next semester starts, so I’m going to try to get as much done before the start of the next semester as I can.  Of course, I will continue, at a much slower pace, after the next semester starts.

Why?

Well, for starters, I think that Whitehead still has something valuable to say.  His work remains the starting point for all process thought, and I think a person who wants to contribute to a particular philosophy needs to read the primary texts.  In Process Philosophy, there is no more primary text than Process and Reality.

Second, as I wrestle with these ideas, it will help to coalesce them in my own mind, in ways that an easier read may not.

Third, by documenting my understanding at this stage of my career, I will be able to look back and see the ways that I’ve grown.  Sometimes, we forget the ways that we grow, but when I read my earlier work, I sometimes smile, because it is a reminder of my own growth.

Fourth, I think I understand Process Philosophy roughly well enough to actually begin to get something out of the text.  This will certainly not be the last time I read Process and Reality, but it just might be the first time I read it with even a hint of comprehension.

Fifth, I hope it invites dialogue with a) those who are interested in process philosophy, but for whom the ideas are still rather new and b) those who are further along the path than me who might be kind enough to help me along. =)  So maybe this can serve as a link in the chain, with my hand extended both ways:  A hand extended to those who want to learn more, and a hand raised up to those who are further along than me who might be willing to help me progress.

Process philosophy is intriguing because it seems to solve many philosophical problems that have plagued mankind for generations.  But I think any philosophical approach needs to be taken with a large dose of humility. This universe still has many secrets to reveal - what we know (or can know?) is a tiny fraction of the wealth that is out there.

One word of caution to those who are interested in Process Philosophy:  It might not be a wise idea to begin one’s introduction to Process Philosophy by reading Process and Reality.  Process and Reality is a complicated work.  The terminology can be complex, the ideas new (and frankly, not presented particularly well.) Often times, familiarity with Process thought is presupposed without accompanying explanation. (There is good reason for that:  Process and Reality was not Whitehead’s introductory work.  It was written as a series of lectures after Process had already been formulated.)  It is NOT an easy read.  There are much better introductions to Process.  For the moment, I am recommending David Ray Griffin’s Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism as a good primer to Process Philosophy.

I will try to make my notes highly readable. I do not intend to delve too deeply into Whitehead’s work in this series, nor to criticize it at this point. The point of these notes is to put his ideas into as plain of English as I can for the purposes of explicating my understanding of process philosophy.

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Sorry for the delay, but the instinct post in the epistemology series is finally complete.   One more post to go in that series.  I didn’t bother to bump it up to the top of the blog:  I simply edited it where it stood but it’s only a few posts down.

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Am I vegan?  In a word, no.  I am a vegetarian.  I would like to decrease my dependence on animal products as much as possible, but I still have a weakness for some milk products.  (Although after my last experience with chocolate milkshakes, I don’t think I have to worry about milk anymore.)  Particularly, I struggle with cheese.  I am hoping to decrease my dependence on animal products until eventually I am completely animal free.

Some of these are relatively simple substitutions:  soy crumbles for ground beef.  Tofu to replace meat. (You’d be surprised how well tofu goes where the recipe calls for meat:  and this is the opinion of a man who used to live on practically nothing but meat.)  Agave nectar replaces honey.  Or as another alternative, maple syrup replaces honey. (A peanut butter and maple syrup sandwich is heaven.)

Cheese is the hard one.  Most of the so-called “veggie slices” are actually made with casein, which is a milk derivitive.  Frankly, if I’m going to have cow protein in my food, I’d rather have organic cheese.  It tastes better, and it is honest about what it is. Unlike the veggie products that claim to be veggie while secretly harboring animal product.  I continue to look for a good non-animal-based cheese substitute.  Meanwhile, I’ve found success on the ice cream front because I’ve found that chocolate soy ice cream isn’t half bad.

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You have to watch the Thai:  they will stick fish sauce in their curries and call it “vegetarian”.  Here is a real vegan Thai curry that is out of this world.  Please understand, this is a very involved recipe, requiring precise attention to the quantity of the ingredients.  This is especially true regarding the brown sugar, coconut milk, soy sauce, and veggie broth.  There is some margin for error based on personal taste, but you can also easily ruin this recipe, so my suggestion is that you follow it precisely and then adapt it slowly (to make it sweeter, less sweet, etc) if it doesn’t turn out how you like it.  Also, the final product may taste different than it does at an earlier stage, so remember that and don’t get carried away changing the amount of the ingredients.  You can probably have a lot more leeway with the potatoes, tofu, and peanuts, as these don’t affect the flavor of the sauce as much; you can even take out these ingredients and put in your own, maybe try a nice green vegetable like an asparagus or something like that.  Experiment away on that!

Ingredients

2/3 cup vegetable broth

2 cans coconut milk

4 tablespoons soy sauce

1.5 tablespoons Thai curry paste (red, green, yellow, panang, or masaman, take your pick)

3 cups peeled and cut potatoes

1/2 cup raw peanuts (can substitute cashews, almonds, or chickpeas)

6 ounces firm tofu (cubed)

5 tablespoons brown sugar

Directions

1) Mix the veggie broth, soy sauce, and curry paste together. Whisk until the curry paste has dissolved into the mixture. It need not be completely perfect. The heat of the crock pot will help to dissolve the mixture.

2) Add all of the ingredients to the crock pot. (Potatoes need to cook for quite some time.  This recipe really needs to be cooked on the lowest setting of the crock pot, for about 5.5 hours, to fully dissolve the fat in the coconut milk and really make the potatoes nice and tender.)

3) Eat and enjoy. This makes a hearty stew style curry.

The great thing about this meal, as with pretty much all crock pot meals, is the cost.  I spent about $13.00 in ingredients.  The crock pot should provide at least 4 generous servings, meaning that a meal costs only a little over three bucks!  Hard to beat the price.

Filed under: Ordinary Miracles, tofu thai curry, vegan recipes | 1 Comment