Speculative philosophy is designed in such a manner as to make one think about the nature of the universe, not to reach absolutes certainties. A single question may have a thousand and one valid answers, and yet, each of these answers is subject to change and/or modification as it moves through time. What was once considered "good" may no longer be "good" enough.
Becca uses her voice extraordinarily well. She's melodic and rhythmic. The melody matches the meaning (uptalk at the start of an idea, pitching down at its conclusion ) and so do her use of pace and tempo changes. And her numerous dips into the vocal fry register make it sexy.
Fascinating. You make complete sense. It sounds like Whitehead has created a vocabulary for dialog between conscious and unconscious phenomena. A literal vocabulary instead of a metaphorical vocabulary. One that should assist the academic study of the autonomous nature of the archetypal structures of our psyche. Keep in mind that Jung predicated his notion of archetypes as instinctive motivators. As if they were anchored in our DNA. From that perspective, you presentation is very plausible.
Interesting. I am not a big fan of astrology but I am of Jung. He and Pauli did show that there is some reasonable predictive qualities to the help us understand people and our archetypes. I think astrology is all about archetypes. That said, I suggest that bringing in the real possibility that consciousness is primal rather than a derivation from the body, would be very helpful. A definite sort of prism occurred in me when I became fully conscious when I was 2, sitting in a hospital bed recovering from diphtheria. I would be happy to discuss consciousness and, for that matter time, here further.
From Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel and Marx all tried to explain the process, that indeed involve physics and metaphysics (as in QM). Whitehead does have some indications of metaphysics elsewhere, but not in this lecture.
It's really interesting, Whitehead's cosmology (as presented by the lovely Ms. Tarnas) seems to parallel much of the gnostics' beliefs. The primal chaos of the pure creative "realm" sounds like the pleroma. The first organizing principle she describes could be compared to the demiurge, and so on.
One huge difference between Whitehead and gnosticism is that Whitehead fully values embodiment and actuality. The creative realm is unconscious and a formal cause for sure, but it is deficient, as Becca pointed out, in that it is not actual nor conscious.
Would you regard archetypes as eternal objects a la Whitehead or archetypes as created forms (created through a process of archetypalizing a la McLuhan (From Cliche to Archetype) or Mark Hansen's idea of the vibrational continuum (in "Feed Forward")? Or is their eternity a consequence (rather than a precondition) of their actualization? What is the place of (Whitehead's) God's Superjective nature? (The lure for feeling in the creative advance). This seems to correlate with Aurobindo's Supramental poise (whereas the Transcendent correlates to Whitehead's Primordial and Aurobindo's Universal poise correlates to Whitehead's Consequent nature). Nice talk!
8:15: "There's an image that I like to draw on to try and express this idea of chaos becoming cosmos. . . . So, the image I want to draw is one of a prism. And if you think of creativity--that realm of pure potential and chaos--as the white light, and then you can think of God as the prism, the white light passes through God; God orders that creativity into the refracted colors--the archetypes. But within the band of light that is each of those colors, there's an infinity of shades that are at play within each one. So, you can think of that like the archetype of Venus: every shade of, let's say, green--every shade--are all the possibilities of what Venus could ingress as. Or, all the shades of blue are all the possibilities of how Neptune could enter into incarnate reality."
Here is the citation: Carl Gustav Jung, "The Psychology of the Child Archetype," in The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 2nd ed., vol. 9, part 1, Collected Works of Carl Gustav Jung, trans. R.F.C. Hull, ed. H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, and W. McGuire, Bollingen Series XX (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 179.
Good luck a bunch more is needed to call a convo didn’t get much understanding but clearly a good start on complicated scholarly info and comfort will be obtained with experience
When she says “actuality” she’s off. The eternal object is what would be more actual or real than what and where we reside. We reside in the domain of process or change and or becoming. We are not being and so we are not the actual. For if we are forever becoming then we never become. Like being on a journey and never arriving to the destination. Where the destination is a metaphor for Being. True Being is unchanging and so real. Anything that changes no longer is what it was, either in whole or in part. No longer being what you were means that you no longer are. Meaning you don’t exist. For it’s the persisting continuity of an entity, which refers to that entity remaining the same with itself, that constitutes why it is being or actual. When something changes, it no longer is; the being that it was is lost. And what’s lost doesn’t exist. And what doesn’t exist is not actual. Incidentally Plato’s book theaetetus talks about whitehead’s process metaphysics. Perhaps whitehead ripped off Plato’s ideas. He’s the one that did say that the history of philosophy are foot notes to Plato. Moreover, whitehead studied Plato and I’m told he focused on Plato’s middle period dialogues, of which Plato’s Theaetetus is one. Whitehead seems to have had to smuggle in platonic thinking in order to make what would other wise be an unintelligible world more rational. In other words, Plato already demonstrates, by hypothesizing the complete non-existence of self existent entities, that there can be NO knowledge. Full stop. To be clear, Plato describes this process world as various motions, for nothing truly is but everything is mutually becoming each other. I think Plato was very charitable in how he described such a world devoid of self-existent anything. He gave it some intelligibility if you were living it. Because that charity isn’t really justifiable. On the first case such an extreme situation where NO self-existence is available means that there cannot be duration. For duration is a continuous whole that stands out as existing in contrast to others. In other words it has a flavor of independence; which is what self existence means. Edmund husserl points out that the perception of duration presupposes the duration of perception, meaning that our consciousness has a oneness to it that allows us to capture the many diverse instances we perceive. But if we had no such continuity, then we would be as aware as a motion picture cinemas where the machine has no awareness of each passing frame. Or if we do have awareness, the awareness would be limited to each instance but not connected with and to past, present and future instances. Imagine hearing a song at each instance but not the melody. A pure process metaphysics is untenable, as far as I can tell, and a platonic view and even a Christian world view, which is very much platonic, are far more tenable.
Speculative philosophy is designed in such a manner as to make one think about the nature of the universe, not to reach absolutes certainties. A single question may have a thousand and one valid answers, and yet, each of these answers is subject to change and/or modification as it moves through time. What was once considered "good" may no longer be "good" enough.
Thank you for the clarity Becca!
Becca uses her voice extraordinarily well. She's melodic and rhythmic. The melody matches the meaning (uptalk at the start of an idea, pitching down at its conclusion ) and so do her use of pace and tempo changes.
And her numerous dips into the vocal fry register make it sexy.
Fascinating. You make complete sense.
It sounds like Whitehead has created a vocabulary for dialog between conscious and unconscious phenomena. A literal vocabulary instead of a metaphorical vocabulary. One that should assist the academic study of the autonomous nature of the archetypal structures of our psyche.
Keep in mind that Jung predicated his notion of archetypes as instinctive motivators. As if they were anchored in our DNA. From that perspective, you presentation is very plausible.
Interesting. I am not a big fan of astrology but I am of Jung. He and Pauli did show that there is some reasonable predictive qualities to the help us understand people and our archetypes. I think astrology is all about archetypes. That said, I suggest that bringing in the real possibility that consciousness is primal rather than a derivation from the body, would be very helpful. A definite sort of prism occurred in me when I became fully conscious when I was 2, sitting in a hospital bed recovering from diphtheria. I would be happy to discuss consciousness and, for that matter time, here further.
From Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel and Marx all tried to explain the process, that indeed involve physics and metaphysics (as in QM). Whitehead does have some indications of metaphysics elsewhere, but not in this lecture.
It's really interesting, Whitehead's cosmology (as presented by the lovely Ms. Tarnas) seems to parallel much of the gnostics' beliefs. The primal chaos of the pure creative "realm" sounds like the pleroma. The first organizing principle she describes could be compared to the demiurge, and so on.
One huge difference between Whitehead and gnosticism is that Whitehead fully values embodiment and actuality. The creative realm is unconscious and a formal cause for sure, but it is deficient, as Becca pointed out, in that it is not actual nor conscious.
Do you know why God created Economists? (The Answer) In order make Astrologers look good.
it would be interesting to clothe not only astrology but also the other two siblings of Hermeticism alchemy and theurgy in Whiteheadian thought...
Would you regard archetypes as eternal objects a la Whitehead or archetypes as created forms (created through a process of archetypalizing a la McLuhan (From Cliche to Archetype) or Mark Hansen's idea of the vibrational continuum (in "Feed Forward")? Or is their eternity a consequence (rather than a precondition) of their actualization? What is the place of (Whitehead's) God's Superjective nature? (The lure for feeling in the creative advance). This seems to correlate with Aurobindo's Supramental poise (whereas the Transcendent correlates to Whitehead's Primordial and Aurobindo's Universal poise correlates to Whitehead's Consequent nature). Nice talk!
8:15: "There's an image that I like to draw on to try and express this idea of chaos becoming cosmos. . . . So, the image I want to draw is one of a prism. And if you think of creativity--that realm of pure potential and chaos--as the white light, and then you can think of God as the prism, the white light passes through God; God orders that creativity into the refracted colors--the archetypes. But within the band of light that is each of those colors, there's an infinity of shades that are at play within each one. So, you can think of that like the archetype of Venus: every shade of, let's say, green--every shade--are all the possibilities of what Venus could ingress as. Or, all the shades of blue are all the possibilities of how Neptune could enter into incarnate reality."
Fantastic lecture, thank you.
Where did that quote from Jung at the beginning come from, on the numinousity of the archetypes?
Thanks.
Here is the citation: Carl Gustav Jung, "The Psychology of the Child Archetype," in The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 2nd ed., vol. 9, part 1, Collected Works of Carl Gustav Jung, trans. R.F.C. Hull, ed. H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, and W. McGuire, Bollingen Series XX (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 179.
What is meant with the term "white heads"?
It is referring to the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead.
Thanks for clarifying the context.
That´s why I couldn´t find the term; as non-native english-user.
Thanks for posting this...
YES. Excellent!!!!
I usually just listen but this one I had to watch 🤣😍
Good luck a bunch more is needed to call a convo didn’t get much understanding but clearly a good start on complicated scholarly info and comfort will be obtained with experience
has the lecturer read any of Dennis Ellwell' s work, starting with Cosmic Loom.
highly recommended by a dear friend
Good stuff thanks
I love you Becca
When she says “actuality” she’s off.
The eternal object is what would be more actual or real than what and where we reside.
We reside in the domain of process or change and or becoming. We are not being and so we are not the actual.
For if we are forever becoming then we never become. Like being on a journey and never arriving to the destination. Where the destination is a metaphor for Being.
True Being is unchanging and so real. Anything that changes no longer is what it was, either in whole or in part. No longer being what you were means that you no longer are. Meaning you don’t exist. For it’s the persisting continuity of an entity, which refers to that entity remaining the same with itself, that constitutes why it is being or actual. When something changes, it no longer is; the being that it was is lost. And what’s lost doesn’t exist. And what doesn’t exist is not actual.
Incidentally Plato’s book theaetetus talks about whitehead’s process metaphysics. Perhaps whitehead ripped off Plato’s ideas. He’s the one that did say that the history of philosophy are foot notes to Plato. Moreover, whitehead studied Plato and I’m told he focused on Plato’s middle period dialogues, of which Plato’s Theaetetus is one.
Whitehead seems to have had to smuggle in platonic thinking in order to make what would other wise be an unintelligible world more rational. In other words, Plato already demonstrates, by hypothesizing the complete non-existence of self existent entities, that there can be NO knowledge. Full stop.
To be clear, Plato describes this process world as various motions, for nothing truly is but everything is mutually becoming each other.
I think Plato was very charitable in how he described such a world devoid of self-existent anything. He gave it some intelligibility if you were living it. Because that charity isn’t really justifiable. On the first case such an extreme situation where NO self-existence is available means that there cannot be duration. For duration is a continuous whole that stands out as existing in contrast to others. In other words it has a flavor of independence; which is what self existence means.
Edmund husserl points out that the perception of duration presupposes the duration of perception, meaning that our consciousness has a oneness to it that allows us to capture the many diverse instances we perceive. But if we had no such continuity, then we would be as aware as a motion picture cinemas where the machine has no awareness of each passing frame. Or if we do have awareness, the awareness would be limited to each instance but not connected with and to past, present and future instances. Imagine hearing a song at each instance but not the melody.
A pure process metaphysics is untenable, as far as I can tell, and a platonic view and even a Christian world view, which is very much platonic, are far more tenable.
0. Potential = Being
1. Actual = Becoming (actualized)
Interesting.
She's just reading.
definitely sounds like an astrologist..
Sigh... astrology?
haha, god's whitehead
The questions smaller ,the answers so grey even astrology gets a hearing - Take me now Lord !