Download here: Ultraquantum Relativity

Comments welcome.

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Dear Michael,

An update. The path is getting clearer, so I am traveling faster; but it can still peter out.

What on earth did Peter do to deserve this verb?

I could not resist coining merology to indicate indebtedness to and departure from the mereology of Lukasiewicz, and to shed his otiose -o-.

Do pass it on.

Best,

David

Download here: Cell Theory of Nature

Comments welcome–

Download MS Word Version of Paper

Please do not circulate outside group (until published, Spr 2009)

Physical Emergence and Process Ontology

William M. Kallfelz

Committee for Philosophy and the Sciences (CPaS), Department of Philosophy,

University of Maryland, College Park, MD.

Submitted to:

World Futures Journal, special issue on process thought and natural science

Special editors: Franz Riffert and Timothy Eastman

June 3, 2007

Abstract

Alfred North Whitehead introduces in Process and Reality the notion that the “philosophy of organism is a cell-theory of actuality.” I argue here that the most promising venue for a concordance with process ontology vis-à-vis extant physical theory includes the notions of dynamical and ontological emergence in the physical sciences, as described for in Silberstein & McGeever (1999) as well as in Kronz & Tiehen (2002). Here I draw on my previous claims (1997, 2005, 2006) to show in more general terms how process ontology provides a more unified characterization of ontological and dynamical emergence. Read the rest of this entry »

UPDATED AND CORRECTED - 8/30/08

In his latest post, Henry writes:

“Mike’s position has been that W’s full scheme does entail an absolute serial order. My position is that W’s words do not entail such an absolute serial order of the coming into being of the occasions (or of their initiation and termination “dates”), and implicitly that Nobo’s supersessional ordering involves adding essential content to what W said (at least in PR). Whitehead’s words permit, I believe, a “relativistic” notion of coming into beingness in which the ordering of the parts of occasions whose standpoints are wholly spacelike is not ontologically or metaphysically or logically significant.”

I believe this to be an accurate summary of our respective views.  More accurately, my position is that Whitehead’s metaphysics and cosmology do imply a fundamental serial ordering of concrescences, as described above–but not one that is spatiotemporal.  The serial ordering is strictly mereological-logical and described fully in Whitehead’s Theory of Extension (Part IV of Process and Reality). Read the rest of this entry »

The issue here is whether Whitehead’s theory of nature, particularly as described in Process and Reality (PR), entails the existence of a universal/absolute/objective linear ordering in which all occasions (or at least their initiation and termination “dates”) can be placed. Nobo’s theory contains such an ordering (supersessional time), and one question is whether the existence of such an ordering is entailed by Whitehead’s actual words.

This issue has been the subject of a discussion involving Mike Epperson, Jorge Nobo, and myself. These exchanges have served to define the issues, and our respective understanding of W’s scheme. Mike’s position has been that W’s full scheme does entail an absolute serial order. My position is that W’s words do not entail such an absolute serial order of the coming into being of the occasions (or of their initiation and termination “dates”), and implicity that Nobo’s supersessional ordering involves adding essential content to what W said (at least in PR). Whitehead’s words permit, I believe, a “relativistic” notion of coming into beingness in which the ordering of the parts of occasions whose standpoints are wholly spacelike is not ontologically or metaphysically or logically significant. Read the rest of this entry »

Stapp’s Comments of 7/30/08 on the first part of Epperson’s:

Whitehead’s Theory of Extension as it Pertains to Henry’s Question: Part 2

Dear Mike,

Many thanks for sending your more concise attachment, which focuses on the particular passages in PR that you believe lead to the logical conclusion that W’s scheme, as described in PR, entails a single universal time in which the coming into being of the ALL occasions can be plotted.

MGE: Well, nothing in my attached document said anything about time ordering. The ordering he talks about in his Theory of Extension is purely mereological. Again, the thesis in W’s Theory of Extension, which I attempted to summarize in the attached document, is that Spatiotemporal ordering is a ‘more specialized’ form of ordering embedded in a more fundamental, purely mereological, serially ordered, inclusively related regions—regions that are NOT spatiotemporal! These regions are, for Whitehead, purely first-order regions describing the internal relatedness of actualities. They are, in other words, metaphysical regions, not physical regions. They are denumerable. They are serially ordered. Read the rest of this entry »

Some References for the “Quantum Praxiology” project
in addition to books by CPNS Research Fellows

Books

Bedau, Mark and Paul Humphreys, eds., 2008. Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Bub, Jeffrey. 1997. Interpreting the Quantum World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

d’Espagnat, Bernard, 2006. On Physics and Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Flanagan, Owen, 2007. The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Green, H. S., 2000. Information Theory and Quantum Physics: Physical Foundations for Understanding the Conscious Process. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

Griffin, David, 1998. Unsnarling the World-Know: Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body Problem. Berkeley: UC Press.

Griffin, David, 2007. Whitehead’s Radically Different Postmodern Philosophy: An Argument for its Contemporary Relevance. Albany: SUNY Press.

Kauffman, Stuart, 2008. Reinventing the Sacred: A New view of Science, Reason, and Religion. NY: Basic Books. [see also Kauffman's earlier works: Investigations, At Home in the Universe, The Origins of Order]

Laughlin, Robert, 2005. A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down. NY: Basic Books.

Pred, Ralph, 2005. Onflow: Dynamics of Consciousness and Experience. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Rescher, Nicholas, 2000. Process Philosophy: A Survey of Basic Issues. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press [see also Rescher's Process Metaphysics, SUNY, 1996].

Rosenblum, Bruce and Fred Kuttner, 2006. Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness. Oxford: Oxfor University Press.

Teller, Paul, 1995. An Interpretive Introduction to Quantum Field Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Walleczek, Jan, ed., 2000. Self-Organized Biological Dynamics & Nonlinear Control: Toward Understanding Complexity, Chaos and Emergent Function in Living Systems, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [includes papers by Paul Gailey and Jan Walleczek].

General Resources
Resource Guide for Physics and Whitehead, Eastman and Keeton, eds. (PS Supplements, 2004, Issue 6) available online at http://www.ctr4process.org/publications/ProcessStudies/PSS/
(includes many relevant references up to 2004).

Hi everyone–

In his 7/28 post, Henry makes a great point here re: my last post, and it brought up what might be an important question:  Could PNC taken as an a priori metaphysical first principle (implied by Whitehead’s desideratum of logical coherence), writ large and within the context of the metaphysical system given in Process and Reality, yield a well-ordered series of occasions in a scheme where:

1. The physical-causal efficacy of every actual occasion is restricted to its forward light cone.

and

2. Each and every becoming actual occasion is logically, internally related to each and every being.

I believe that Part III and IV in PR together posit both of these, respectively. With respect to 2 and its relationship to extensiveness, for example, Part IV.II.II Assumption 2 (PR 295) states that any two regions A and B are mediately connected such that both A and B are connected with some region C. (Fig. iii, p.296) The question is, if we bring 1 and 2 together, with added attention to governance of internal relations by PNC, will that yield an interpretation of “The many become one and are increased by one” that is free of the problem Henry raises?

Here is our exchange: Read the rest of this entry »

wmes-passages-on-objectification-and-creativity

One and all:

I am attaching a file with selected passages from my Whitehead’s Metaphysics of Extension and Solidarity. I will add a second file in a few days with passages having more to do with the theory of metaphysical extension. I hope these passages will make my meaning clearer and enable the discussion of supersession and absolute order of initiation and termination dates significantly to advance beyond its present point.

I apoligize for the length of the file, but the book is over 400 pages long and I am shooting for quoting no more than 10 % of it.

Best to all,

Jorge

In Jorge’s Reply to Henry’s comment on the issue of absolute ordering, Jorge makes an important point:

…There is an objective well-ordered series of alpha and omega dates that can be read from the well-ordered causal objectifications found within the regional standpoint of every occasion. That follows from the logic of the theory of causal objectification, which is wholly a metaphysical theory. Therefore, the relations it attributes to occasions cannot depend on the contingent features of our cosmic epoch [see my previous message]. They would obtain even in epochs in which phrases like space-like and time-like separations are meaningless.

Such an order, in other words, is necessarily implied by Whitehead’s theory of causal objectification. The latter simply doesn’t work without such an underlying objective ordering of occasions.  It would lose all coherence as a theory given that its signature feature is that every becoming is internally related to all beings antecedent to it. Read the rest of this entry »