Alfred North Whitehead and the Problem of Mental Causation - An Overview by Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes
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- Опубликовано: 13 сен 2024
- © Dr Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes 2022
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§0: Introduction
§1: What is Mental Causation?
§2: Why should Mental Causation be accepted?
§3: What is problem of Mental Causation?
§4: What is the Whiteheadian process resolution to the Problem of Mental Causation?
Thank you for your thoughts on this fascinating issue. In the spirit of 'that adorable genius,' William James, regarding what can be inferred from extraordinary mental phenomena, the most extreme example of mental causation, the Poltergeist, unless fallaciously denied as "antagonistical anomalousness", dispels many weaker arguments against mental causation and may therefore be a more powerful place to begin this discussion. (Apropos, as one of my philosophical heroes on these topics; I hope you'll respond.)
Peter, a fellow Swede/US mystic, U.S. Anderson, who wrote the book "The Secret of Secrets" comes ever so close to solving the Rubix Cube quandary of life. Standing on the shoulders of the giants of transcendentalism, the savants Swedenborg and Emerson all adapted by Anderson to the latest findings of neurologists and even the day's paranormalists. Anderson's philosophy fits the requirements of Occam's Razor all the while infused with the sublime Ralph Waldo Emerson's observation that "..the higher the truth the simpler the answer."
US Anderson, 11th Meditation, Secret of Secrets, 1958
"Behind the world of the senses are higher planes of consciousness where the true causes of things exist...I know that the truth of objects is not completely revealed by my senses, that there is hidden significance in all things. I know that in actuality there are no inanimate objects, that each thing consists of arrested consciousness. I know this consciousness proceeds out of the Emersonian "immense intelligence" that we all sit in the lap of, out of the mind and being of this immense intelligence, God. In its pure form, it is idea only, awareness only, similar, even identical to my own. Therefore, I affirm my oneness with all things. In all, I perceive the indwelling Presence..."
Once you read US Anderson and the Ralph Waldo Emerson infused "mysticism" along now with the process philosophy of Whitehead, you gain a profound appreciation for the poetic lines of TS. Eliot.
"...“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
I'm always surprised I don't see/hear Emerson referenced more often.
I enjoyed your comment. Thank you for sharing.
Amazing! I loved it. Interesting how you avoided the term "nihilism" at the end... but having written _Neo-Nihilism_ where the term is used in nearly the opposite of the naive sense, I perhaps shouldn't be surprised. I also loved, "In place of this somewhat theological underpinning of nomology..." yes... take that, Dennett ;) Really, Peter, you once again show yourself to be at the cutting edge. Always a deep pleasure to see your work. Thank you!
Thank you for your ever kind and insightful comments. You'll notice my if-clause for the moral condition section too earlier on. Do email me when convenient: peter@philosopher.eu
@@Ontologistics I didn't notice because you convinced me years ago, in a way I couldn't deny, that _Was aus Liebe gethan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von Gut und Böse._ So your _if_ is needed to avoid presumption. I'd have noticed if you didn't include it!
US Anderson, 11th Meditation, Secret of Secrets, 1958
"Behind the world of the senses are higher planes of consciousness where the true causes of things exist...I know that the truth of objects is not completely revealed by my senses, that there is hidden significance in all things. I know that in actuality there are no inanimate objects, that each thing consists of arrested consciousness. I know this consciousness proceeds out of the Emersonian "immense intelliegence" that we all sit in the lap of, out of the mind and being of this immense intelligence, God. In its pure form, it is idea only, awareness only, similar, even identical to my own. Therefore, I affirm my oneness with all things. In all I perceive the indwelling Presence..."
Great thought provoking video as usual Pete.
Thanks James
@@Ontologistics cheers from New England to old England
Beautiful
"For our idea of causation is not derived from without, but from within, and what we call the evidence of physical causation is really only certain wholly mental modifications following one another in definite sequence. Hence, we can have no evidence of causation proceeding from Object to Subject. The mind, therefore, cannot prove its own causation from matter or motion, because all evidence of that must itself be mental evidence and nothing but mental, and hence it is as impossible for the mind thus to prove its own causation as it is for water to rise above its source.”
- William Hanna Thomson, _Materialism and Modern Physiology of the Nervous System,_ 3-4
that argument is as old as descartes' and even more then that
Peter, a fellow Swede/US mystic, U.S. Anderson, who wrote the book "The Secret of Secrets" comes ever so close to solving the Rubix Cube quandary of life. Standing on the shoulders of the giants of transcendentalism, the savants Swedenborg and Emerson all adapted by Anderson to the latest findings of neurologists and even the day's paranormalists. Anderson's philosophy fits the requirements of Occam's Razor all the while infused with the sublime Ralph Waldo Emerson's observation that "..the higher the truth the simpler the answer."
US Anderson, 11th Meditation, Secret of Secrets, 1958
"Behind the world of the senses are higher planes of consciousness where the true causes of things exist...I know that the truth of objects is not completely revealed by my senses, that there is hidden significance in all things. I know that in actuality there are no inanimate objects, that each thing consists of arrested consciousness. I know this consciousness proceeds out of the Emersonian "immense intelligence" that we all sit in the lap of, out of the mind and being of this immense intelligence, God. In its pure form, it is idea only, awareness only, similar, even identical to my own. Therefore, I affirm my oneness with all things. In all, I perceive the indwelling Presence..."
Once you read US Anderson and the Ralph Waldo Emerson infused "mysticism" along now with the process philosophy of Whitehead, you gain a profound appreciation for the poetic lines of TS. Eliot.
"...“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Very good style 🤪👑😘
Please narrate “on the tarantulas” from thus spoke Zarathustra
Jordan b peterson narrated it already but i feel you would narrate it better
Is there somewhere this can be read in text form? Brilliant, brilliant summary of this problem and Whitehead’s solution to it. Thank you so much
Thanks. I'm afraid not.
Why does the Mind need to "cause" anything? If it not sufficient for minds to be normative and evaluative in their effects, not "causal"? Epiphenomenalism doesn't apply because the it requires unexplained psychophysical parralelism.
Whitehead as a cryptic dual-aspect monist?!
Rather obvious Whiteheadianism, but well presented in an organized (& comfortably rapid) monologue. Should not the erratic C. S. Peirce be credited with the foreunner of most of these ideas (maybe Bergson too)?
I don't see how process philosophy solves the problem of qualia. It seems to me you're just kind of avoiding the fact that even if there wouldn't be any mental causation, phenomenal experience, the fact that we see colors even though colors aren't supposed to exist, still doesn't get solved.
too speedy 🤓