Continua, absolute order, and causal objectification
by J Nobo ● July 23rd, 2008 ●Dear Henry,
I copy below a passage from your last response to me. Mike and you have had further exchanges on the topic, but, at this time, I want to address only your original question on whether we can find IN WHITEHEAD any unequivocal endorsement of the idea of absolute (as opposed to partial) ordering of the terminations of the coming into being of occasions? Here are the relevant passages:
In addition to absolute in the sense I specified above, a metaphysical past is also absolute in the sense you have in mind. Yes, there is an absolute order of the coming into existence of the occasions. But we have to distinguish between the coming into existence of the occasion as incompletely determinate and its coming into existence as a completely determinate being. One and the same occasion first exists as a becoming and then as a being. The distinction makes perfect sense in respect to supersession, but not in respect to physical time. The distinction also means that there are two supersessional dates associated with an occasion: one marking the initiation of an occasion’s becoming; the other, the termination of the occasion’s becoming (and, hence the initiation of its existence as a superject). These dates situate the occasion, whether as a becoming or as a being, in an absolute, but complex, ordering system.
{HPS: Wow! Although it does seem TO ME that ontological clarity does demand an absolute ordering of the order in which occasions come into existence (an ordering of the process/supersessional “times/dates” of the “termination of the occasion’s becoming”) that conclusion seems very contrary to Einstein’s idea of relativity. It has always seemed to me that Whitehead took pains to NOT differ with what is generally regarded as Einstein’s view that the notion of an absolute ordering of spacelike separated events was meaningless. Of course, in a completely deterministic universe there is no need to consider absolute orderings.
So Einstein, because he assumes classical determinism, is on solid But Whitehead seems to want to allow a true element of freedom/creativity in his conception of the process of the creation of the fixed and settled past out of potentialities pregnant in the undetermined future. So my question is whether you can find IN WHITEHEAD any unequivocal endorsement of the idea of absolute (as opposed to partial) ordering of the terminations of the coming into being of occasions? I found none in PR.}
I doubt you can find a passage in Whitehead in which he explicitly and unequivocally endorses the idea of an absolute order for the becoming and being of occasions. But no such passage is needed, since the idea can be easily deduced from things Whitehead does say unequivocally about an occasion’s dative phase, about causal objectification, about intra-occasional supersession, about the superjective phase, and about the fact that every occasion must have at least one immediate successor.
The dative phase, whatever else it may be, IS a region of the metaphysical extensive continuum, a region bounded and structured, through the ingression of eternal objects, by the creative process of transition that begets the occasion. This is the occasion’s formative region. The occasion embodies the region and cannot exist at all without it. (The region, sans its boundary and structure is uncreated, as is the rest of the metaphysical extensive continuum of which it is a differentiable part–but undifferentiated until bounded and structured..
This is why I say that transition creates a proper region of extension, but not the extension of the region.) In our cosmic epoch, the region will be four dimensional and will be construed as a space-time quantum.
In any epoch, all the remaining phases of an occasion’s becoming presuppose the region, but not vice versa. Additional determinations will accrue to the region as a result of the occasion’s creative process of becoming, but the region in its entirety is there from the outset.
However, neither the region nor its contents have causal efficacy on other occasions until the becoming of the occasion is completed, that is to say, until it exists as a superject or satisfaction. But the occasion in its superjective phase must be immediately succeeded by at least one occasion in its dative phase. Since causal objectification captures and immortally preserves all instances of immediate succession, all initiation and termination dates constitute an objective series of discrete dates.
Add to this that the extensive order of correlative locations (or collocations) of occasions is also captured by the scheme of modal aspects inherent in each occasion’s formative region and the fact emerges that every occasion has a definite position in the extenso-genetic order of occasions–each has a definite ‘where’ in extension and a definite ‘when’ in supersession.
The more important question, I think, is how, in our cosmic epoch, the metaphysical extensive order of occasions, not their supersessional order, comes to be their spatio-temporal order, or, equivalently, how occasions come to constitute a spatio-temporal continuum. Whitehead does provide an explicit, though not detailed, answer to that question.
Remember, first, that the nature of eternal or metaphysical extension involves no metaphysical necessity that regions embodied by actual occasions should form with each other a continuum, or plenum, of actualized extension (PR 35-36). So, for Whitehead, the continuity of actualized extension, that is, the continuity of extension embodied, bounded, and structured by occasions, is “a special condition arising from the society of creatures which constitute our immediate cosmic epoch” (PR 36). In truth, this is not our immediate cosmic epoch, but the vastest, discernible cosmic epoch within which our more specialized epoch is set. This vastest cosmic epoch is defined by the relation of external extensive connection (PR 96–97). Any occasion in it externally adjoins, or is contiguous with, a finite set of other occasions. The contingent emergence of this epoch is not surprising, for, since any occasion can physically anticipate an indefinite number of descendants, in the early stages of the actual universe the rapid expansion in the number of occasions led to many of their descendants coming into being externally adjoining finite sets of other occasions.
Incidentally, this brings up the interesting possibility that, under these crowded conditions, the epoch’s constituent societies had to compete for survival (i.e., prolongation by the addition of new members). But occasions that do not come to be where anticipated by their would-be ancestors are disruptive orphans. If all of a society’s would-be descendant are orphaned, the society ceases to exist. A selective pressure for the origination of mutually adaptive societies thus emerges. This selective pressure gives an advantage to societies with more predictable prolongations. But predictability is enhanced within and between societies whose members exhibit geometrical properties in common.
At any rate, Whitehead holds that within the epoch, or society, of externally adjoining occasions, there arises another epoch defined by the fact that its occasions exhibit geometrical axioms allowing for the definition of straight lines (PR 97). It does not seem to me too far-fetched to imagine that this geometrical society enhances the mutual adaptivity of its constituent societies. Habits of prolongations and interactions become laws of nature. But subordinate geometrical societies could exhibit different geometrical axioms and limit the possible ordering laws of the geometrical epoch. Again, a selective pressure ensues that may select for one particular geometrical society.
In any case, for Whitehead, the geometrical society gives rise within itself to our cosmic epoch proper, an epoch made up of four-dimensional occasions constituting a spatio-temporal continuum and such that the majority of them constitute electro-magnetic societies (PR 98). In this spatio-temporal epoch, the direction from earlier to later of physical time is derived from supersession as captured by causal objectification.
I am attaching a file with passages from many of Whitehead’s works. They document both Whitehead’s subservience to Einstein and Whitehead’s discomfort with the theory of relativity’s conception of contemporaneity and with its denial of action at a distance.
I hope this helps.
Jorge
Dear Jorge,
Many thanks for these quotes.
But let me make my question clearer.
From the viewpoint of any single occasion X, there are
occasions in its past, which can be and perhaps must be
in some sense objectified within X, and there are occasions
in its future in which X can or must be objectified. And there
are other occasions which are neither in that occasion X’s
past or future. This classification is “relative” to occasion X.
And this occasion X can have an experience of “presentational
immediacy. All these relationships are “relative to X”.
That such a classification/organization “relative to X”
is possible does not immediately entail the existence of
a single absolute ordering of the times of initiation and
termination of the becoming of ALL occasions
I do not believe that any of the quotes below, or anything
said in PR—which I have studied—clearly entails the existence
of such a single absolute objective serial time. Most of the references
to being and becoming seem to be interpretable as pertaining to being
or becoming RELATIVE to some occasion X, and hence do not clearly
entail the existence of single serial time in which the initiation and termination times of all occasions can be linearly ordered. The way W
phrased his words suggests to me that he did not want to be absolutely pinned down on this matter of the order of coming into being of the components of occasions not belonging to each other’s future or past.
I shall comment to this effect on the quotes that you have here assembled.
Some Whiteheadian Passages on Action at a Distance and Simultaneity
Collected by Jorge L. Nobo
AE 148 (1917): “The principle by which—consciously or unconsciously—thought has been guided is that in searching for particular causes, remoteness in time and remoteness in space are evidences of comparative disconnection of influence. The extreme form of this principle is the denial of action at a distance either in time or space. The difficulty of accepting this principle in its crude form is, that since there are no contiguous points, only coincident bodies can act on each other. I can see no answer to this difficulty—namely, either bodies have the same location and are thus coincident, or they have different locations and are thus at a distance and do not act on each other.”
[HPS: There is no bar to action of one occasion upon another if their standpoints
are contiguous and light-like displaced from each other. No absolute serial time
is implied. here.]
PNK 53: “II.6 But there are certain objections to the acceptance of Einstein’s definition of simultaneity, the ‘signal-theory’ as we will call it. In the first place light signals are very important elements in our lives, but still we cannot but feel that the signal-theory somewhat exaggerates their position. The very meaning of simultaneity is made to depend on them. There are blind people and dark cloudy nights, and neither blind people nor people in the dark are deficient in a sense of simultaneity. They know quite well what it means to bark both their shins at the same instant. In fact the determination of simultaneity in this way is never made, and if it could be made would not be accurate; for we live in air and not in vacuo.
[HPS: That the special velocity, c, in relatively theory happens to be, and to be called, “the velocity of light” does not give “light” a special favored status in relativity theory. The special velocity is favored, and NO signal is allowed to go faster.]
“Also there are other physical messages from place to place; there is the transmission of physical bodies, the transmission of sound, the transmission of waves and ripples on the surface of water, and the transmission of nerve excitation through the body, and innumerable other forms which enter into habitual experience. The transmision of light is only one among many.
“Furthermore, local time does not concern one material particle only. The same definition of simultaneity holds throughout the whole space of a consentient set in the Newtonian group. The message theory does not account for the consentience in time-reckoning which characterises a consentient set , nor does it account for the fundamental position of the Newtonian group.”
PNK 103: “[Note that spatial diagrams, such as the one above, are to some extent misleading in that they emphasise the spatial character of events at the expense of their temporal character. The temporal character is very far from being represented by an extra dimension producing an ordinary four-dimensional euclidean geometry.]”
[HPS: Yes, there is, for each occasion, a “process” quality, which is a coming into beingness quality that is understood intuitively in terms of some sort of “temporal development”: i.e., as an evolution in some kind of time associated with the coming into being of this particular occasion.]
CN vii: “The divergence [from Einstien] chiefly arises from the fact that I do not accept his theory of non-uniform space or his assumption as to the peculiar fundamental character of light-signals.
[HPS: This has to do with the local variability of the metric. not with an absolute
order in which the beginnings and endings of ALL occasions can be linearly ordered.]
CN 193: “But there is a vital difference [from Einstein’s special relativity]: the critical velocity c which occurs in these formulae has now no connexion whatever with light or with any other fact of the physical field (in distinction from the extensional structure of events). It simply marks the fact that our congruence determination embraces both times and spaces in one universal system, and therefore if two arbitrary units are chosen, one for all spaces and one for all time, their ratio will be a velocity which is a fundamental property of nature expressing the fact that time and spaces are really comparable.”
[HPS: This seems to be in line with the standard idea of “relativity”, namely
that space and time must be conjoined into spacetime, with and indefinite metric
that singles out paths every two points of which lie at zero spacetime distance from each other. I see here no implication of the existence of an absolute objective serial time in which the beginnings and endings of the becomings of ALL occasions can be linearly ordered.]
CN 177: “I call two event-particles which on some or other system of measurement are in the same instantaneous space ‘co-present’ event-particles. Then it is possible that A and B maybe co-present, and that A and C may be co-present, but that B and C may not be co-present. For example, at some inconceivable distance from us there are events co-present with us now and also co-present with the birth of Queen Victoria.”
[HPS: Again, this is in complete accord with standard “relativity”, which
admits no idea of an absolute serial time for the coming into being of facts associated with spacelike separated spacetime regions.]
CN 178: “The difficulty as to discordant time-systems is partly solved by distinguishing what I call the creative advance of nature, which is not properly serial at all, and any one time series.”
[HPS: This seems to be explicitly denying the existence of an absolute serial time
pertaing to ALL events, while admitting the existence of time lines for the coming into existence of a property localized in a sequence of timelike separated spacetime regions. This is exactly the idea of relativity. The creative advance is explicitly asserted here to be non-serial!!]
CN 194: “Namely, there is a definite whole of nature, simultaneously now present, whatever may be the character of its remote events.”
[HPS: Is this “now present” defined relative to some single occurring occasion X? Or is this “now present” associated EQUALLY with the viewpoints of ALL of occasions that constitute the “now present”. Only in this latter case would this idea of a “now present” be supporting the idea of an absolute objective serial time.]
R 341 (pagination from Gross’ selections) “. . . I maintain the old-fashioned belief in the fundamental character of simultaneity. But I adapt it to the novel outlook by the qualification that the meaning of simultaneity may be different in different individual experiences.”
[HPS: This qualification seems to be denying the notion of absolute simultaneity.]
IS 132: [From “Einstein’s Theory: An Alternative Suggestion” (1920) “Thus two event-particles which are contemporaneous in p-time are not necessarily contemporaneous in q-time. In relation to a given event-particle E all other event-particles fall into three classes—(there is the class of event-particles which precede E according to the time-reckonings of all spatio-temporal measure-systems; there is the class of event-particles which are contemporaneous with E in some spatio-temporal measure-system or other; there is the class of event-particles which succeed E according to the time-reckonings of all spatio-temporal measure systems. The first class is the past and the third class is the future. The second class will be called the class co-present with E. The whole class of event-particles co-present with E is not contemporaneous with E according to the time-reckoning of any one definite measure-system. Furthermore, no velocity can exist in nature, in whatever spatio-temporal measure-system it be reckoned, which could carry a material particle from one to the other of two mutually co-present event-particles. If E1 and E2 be a pair of mutually co-present event-particles, then E1 precedes E¬2 in some time-systems and E2 precedes E1 in other time-systems and E1 and E2 are contemporaneous in the remaining time-systems.”
[HPS: This seems to accord with “relativity”, and to undermine the notion of an absolute serial time that specifies the absolute ordering of the beginnings and endings of the becomings of ALL occasions.]
[Nobo: Note that co-presence is not the same as contemporaneity. Note two that the co-present class has an unexplained objective status
[HPS: Why “unexplained”? A spacelike separation would explain it!.]
and that what is relativised to different frames of reference is the order in which two co-present event-particles will appear. The objective status may be explained by the doctrine of causal objectification. But Whitehead, in these writings, is still staying away from explicit metaphysical considerations.]
[HPS: The whole discussion HERE seems to be compatible with the standard ideas of relativity theory, with light-cone separation between past, co-present, and
future.]
IS 245: From “Time” (1927): “Here an ambiguity arises, which has been disclosed by the modern physical theory of relativity. There are two available senses of “simultaneity.” It may mean those occasions which are not causally related to occasion A, either as causing or caused. But it may mean those occasions which are prehended in A with presentational immediacy. If we identify these two meanings we are reduced to the classical view of time as strictly serial.
simul
[HPS: But in standard relativity one does NOT identify these two. So he is going along, again, with standard relativity, and is REJECTING serial time, not endorsing it.]
If we hold that the presentationally immediate occasions are only some among the occasions which are not causally related, we can include the modern relativity theory in this doctrine of time.”
[HPS: So he is going along with relativity theory, and is rejecting serial time.]
IS 149–56 contains Whitehead’s symposium presentation titled “The Problem of Simultaneity: Is there a Paradox in the Principle of Relativity in Regard to the Relation of Time Measured to Time Lived?” (1923) “All the difficulty arises from the denial of simultaneity as a fundamental fact of awareness” (153). “With this point of view simultaneity is the foundation of science” (156).
[HPS: Yes, AWARENESS, which comes into being in association with
individual occasions, defines a simultaneity that is fundamental to science, which
rests on “our observations”, on “our knowledge”. But the “awarenesses” associated with occasions that are “simultaneous relative to one occasion X”, can define differing sets of simultaneous events/occasions. That is the problem. There is no implication here of an absolute (not relative to the occasion that is having the experienced awareness) notion of simultaneity.
SMW 125: “A duration, as the field of the pattern realised in the actualisation of one of its contained events, is an epoch, i.e., an arrest. Endurance is the repetition of the pattern in successive events. Thus endurance requires a succession of durations, each exhibiting the pattern. In this account ‘time’ has been separated from ‘extension’ and from the ‘divisibility’ which arises from the character of spatio-temporal [sic] of extension.. Accordingly we must not proceed to conceive time as another form of extensiveness. Time is sheer succession of epochal occasions. But the entities which succeed each other in this account are durations. The duration is that which is required for the realisation of a pattern in a given event. Thus the divisibility and extensiveness is within the given duration. The epochal duration is not realised via its successive parts but is given with its parts. In this way the objection which Zeno might make to the joint validity of two passages from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is met by abandoning the earlier of the two passages.” [italics in the original]
[Here Whitehead quotes the two passages: the first, in effect maintaining a continuity of becoming of space and time; the second, maintaining that time and space are quanta continua so that points and moments are only limits. Whitehead accepts the second passage only if by ‘time and space’ is meant the (uncreated or eternal) extensive continuum. Whitehead then goes on to say the following.]
SMW 126: “Realisation is the becoming of time in the field of extension. Extension is the field of events qua their potentialities. In realisation the potentiality becomes actuality. But the potential pattern requires a duration; and the duration must be exhibited as an epochal whole, by the realisation of the pattern. Thus time is the succession of elements in themselves divisible and contiguous. A duration, in becoming temporal, thereby incurs realisation in respect to some enduring object. Temporalisation is realisation. Temporalisation is not another continuous process. It is an atomic succession. Thus time is atomic (i.e., epochal), though what is temporalised is divisible.This doctrine follows from the doctrine of events, and of the nature of enduring objects. In the next chapter we must consider its relevance to the quantum theory of recent science.
“It is to be noted that this doctrine of the epochal character of time does not depend on the modern doctrine of relativity, and holds equally—and , more simply—if this doctrine be abandoned. It does depend on the analysis of the intrinsic character of an event, as the most concrete finity entity.”
[HPS: Yes, on coming into beingness, which is discussed in terms of the coming into being of individual occasions, without any explicit determination of the relative order of the aspects of the coming into beingness of co-present occasions.. W’s descriptions of coming into being always seem to focus, to the extent that he is explicit, on the coming into being of an occasion, with, it seems to me, no explicit commitment to any definite ordering of the components of the coming into being of occasions not lying in each others future or past.]
[The argument is then reviewed with further references to Kant and Zeno.]
PR 468–69: It is not necessary for the philosophy of organism entirely to deny that there is direct objectification of one occasion in a later occasion, which is not contiguous to it. Indeed, the contrary opinion
[HPS: e.g., that there could be direct objectification over timelike or spacelike intervals]
would seem the more natural for this doctrine. Provided that physical science maintains its denial of ‘action at a distance,’ the safer guess is that direct objectification is practically negligible except for contiguous occasions;
[HPS: i.e., One does not need direct long-range objectification , because the action can be via occasions with contiguous standpoints that are light-like or time-like separated.]
but that this practical negligibility is a characteristic of the present cosmic epoch, without any metaphysical generality.”
[HPS: In the present epoch we have spacetime filled up wth standpoints..
But what happens if physical science does allow faster-than-light ‘action at a distance’ is not discussed. That is the case of immediate interest. If there is FTL ‘action at a distance’, then W seems prepared to allow direct objectification at a distance. Does this require him to break his effective silence of the question of the relative order of the coming into being of the components of co-present occasions, and to explicity embrace the concept of an absolute objective order in which the beginnings and endings of ALL occasions are linearly ordered? Why does the presence of FTL action at a distance force him or require him to change break his silence pertaining to the order of the coming into being of the components of occasions neither of which can be objectified in the other.]
AI 195: “It is the definition of contemporary events that they happen in causal independence of each other. Thus two contemporary occasions are such that neither belongs to the past of the other. The two occasions are not in any direct relation to efficient causation.”
[HPS: The question is whether the components of such occasions logically need to be linearly ordered, and whether W claimed that such a linear ordering exists.
I have argued above that these quotes do not show that W made this claim.]
Dear Henry,
As I said in the message to which this file should have been attached, but wasn’t, the quoted passages are intended to document both Whitehead’s subservience to Einstein and Whitehead’s discomfort with the theory of relativity’s conception of contemporaneity and with its denial of action at a distance. They were not intended to support the thesis that 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. Causal objectifications do document the creative advance of nature, which is not strictly serial precisely because occasions have metaphysical contemporaries. A temporal series, for Whitehead, is exclusively made up of occasions such that no occasion in the series is contemporary with any other occasion in the series. Clearly, that is not the case with the creative advance of actuality.
It is true that the metaphysical relations of precedence, succession and contemporaneity are defined relative to a given occasion, but those relations are objective and invariant. If x and y are mutual contemporaries, they will never appear otherwise in their objectifications in other occasions.
Eventually, it is precisely this doctrine, together with that of anticipatory objectifications, and together with the doctrine of conformation, that enables a distinction between information derived from signals subject to the speed of light limitation and information not derived from such signals but from the fact that the whole settled past relative to an occasion is causally objectified in that occasion.
My take on this is derived from Whitehead’s, but also, I am bold to say, better than Whitehead’s. Each occasion is informed by the objectification of its correlative universe-state and therefore “knows”
it and can act accordingly. Given your views, Henry, I would have thought that this is precisely the kind of theory you would want Whitehead to have.
We are under a tornado watch and I need to go home.
Best,
Jorge
Dear Jorge,
Yes, your supersessional ideas are indeed, in the direction I think one must go. So my comments are “Devil’s Advocate” responses.
As I said in earlier communications, it seems to me that one needs some sort of serial order in order to make the ontological (metaphysical?) conception clear. But I was unable in my reading of PR to see in Whitehead any clear assertion of any serial ordering of (the components of) metaphysically contemporaneous events. He seems to me to be a bit opaque on that specific issue.
He does say “The many become one, and are increased by one.”
But this seems to entail a serial (single-file) ordering of the whole occasions, with no metaphysical contemporaries. I do not see how you reconcile your supersessional ordering with “The many become one, and are increased by one.” His descriptions of the creative advance focus on the becoming of individual occasions, which fails to inform us about the relative order of the beginnings and endings of metaphysically contemporaneous occasion. I do not see how these ordering are fixed in the process of becoming of two completely metaphysically contemporaneous occasions, or why and how they are fixed by the becoming of later occasions. The spacetime model is at least one LOGICAL possibility for the arrangement of the fixing of past, present, and future, and in this model the relative time-ordering of space-like separated point is not specified. Where does W specifically denounce that a possibility also for the metaphsical ordering? It does contradict, it seems to me “The many become one, and are increased by one.” But I think your scheme with its overlapping contemporaries also has troubles with that seemingly completely serial notion.