Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

is immanent; as a capacity for determination it is transcendent; in both réles it is relevant to something not itself. There is no character belonging to the actual apart from its exclusive determination by selected eternal objects. The definiteness of the actual arises from the exclusiveness of eternal objects in their function as determinants. If the actual entity be this, then by the nature of the case it is not that or that. The fact of incompatible alternatives is the ultimate fact in virtue of which there is definite character. A conceptual feeling is the feeling of an eternal object in respect to its genera capacity as a determinant of character, including thereby its capacity of exclusiveness. In the technical phraseology of these lectures, a conceptual feeling is a feeling whose ‘datum’ is an eternal object. Analogously a negative prehension is termed ‘conceptual,’ when its datum is an eternal object. In a conceptual feeling there is no necessary progress from the ‘initial data’ to the ‘objective datum.’ The two may be identical, except in so far as conceptual feelings with diverse sources of origination acquire integration.

Conceptual prehensions, positive or negative, constitute the primary operations among those belonging to the mental pole of an actual entity.

SECTION III

The subjective form of a conceptual feeling has the character of a ‘valuation,’ and this notion must now be explained.

A conceptual feeling arises in some incomplete phase of its subject and passes into a supervening phase in which it has found integration with other feelings. In this supervening phase, the eternal object, which is the datum of the conceptual feeling, is an ingredient in some sort of datum in which the other components are the objective data of other feelings in the earlier phase. This new datum is the integrated datum; it will be some sort of ‘contrast.’ By the first categoreal condition the feelingsp. 368 of the earlier phase are compatible for integration. Thus the supervention of the later phase does not involve elimination by negative prehensions; such eliminations of positive prehensions in the concrescent subject would divide that subject into many subjects, and would divide these many subjects from the superject. But, though there can be no elimination from the supervening phase as a whole, there may be elimination from some new integral feeling which is merely one component of that phase.

But in the formation of this integrated datum there must be determination of exactly how this eternal object has ingress into that datum conjointly with the remaining eternal objects and actual entities derived from the other feelings. This determination is effected by the subjective forms of the component conceptual feelings. Again it is to be remembered that, by the first categoreal condition, this subjective form is not independent of the other feelings in the earlier phase, and thus is such as to effect this determination. Also the integral feeling has its subjective form with its pattern of intensiveness. This patterned intensiveness regulates the distinctive relative importance of each element of the datum as felt in that feeling. This intensive regulation of that eternal object as felt in the integrated datum, is determined by the subjective form of the conceptual feeling. Yet again, by reference to the first, and seventh, categoreal conditions, this intensive form of the conceptual feeling has dependence also in this respect on the other feelings of the earlier phase. Thus, according as the valuation of the conceptual feeling is a ‘valuation up’ or a ‘valuation down,’ the importance of the eternal object as felt in the integrated feeling is enhanced, or attenuated. Thus the valuation is both qualitative, determining how the eternal object is to be utilized, and is also intensive, determining what importance that utilization is to assume.

Thus a valuation has three characteristics:

(1) According to the categories of subjective unity, andp. 369 of subjective harmony, the valuation is dependent on the other feelings in its phase of origination.

(ii) The valuation determines in what status the eternal object has ingression into the integrated nexus physically felt.

(i111) The valuation values up, or down, so as to determine the intensive importance accorded to the eternal object by the subjective form of the integral feeling.

These three characteristics of an integral feeling, derived from its conceptual components, are summed up in the term ‘valuation.’

But though these three characteristics are included in a valuation, they are merely the outcome of the subjective aim of the subject, determining what it is itself integrally to be, in its own character of the superject of its own process.

SECTION IV

SECTION IV

Consciousness concerns the subjective form of a feeling. But such a subjective form requires a certain type of objective datum. A subjective form in abstraction loses its reality, and sinks into an eternal object capable of determining a feeling into that distinctive type of definiteness. But when the eternal object ‘informs’ a feeling it can only so operate in virtue of its conformation to the other components which jointly constitute the definiteness of the feeling. The moral of this slight discussion must now be applied to the notion of ‘consciousness.’ Consciousness is an element in feeling which belongs to its subjective form. But there can only be that sort of subjective form when the objective datum has an adequate character. Further, the objective datum can only assume this character when it is derivate from initial data which carry in their individual selves the reciprocal possibilities of this objective synthesis.

A pure conceptual feeling in its first mode of origination never involves consciousness. In this respect a pure mental feeling, conceptual or propositional, is analogousp. 370 to a pure physical feeling. A primary feeling of either type, or a propositional feeling, can enrich its subjective form with consciousness only by means of its alliances.

Whenever there is consciousness there is some element of recollection. It recalls earlier phases from the dim recesses of the unconscious. Long ago this truth was asserted in Plato’s doctrine of reminiscence. No doubt Plato was directly thinking of glimpses of eternal truths lingering in a soul derivate from a timeless heaven of pure form. Be that as it may, then in a wider sense consciousness enlightens experience which precedes it, and could be without it if considered as a mere datum.

Hume, with opposite limitations to his meaning, asserts the same doctrine. He maintains that we can never conceptually entertain what we have never antecedently experienced through impressions of sensation. The philosophy of organism generalizes the notion of ‘impressions of sensation’ into that of ‘pure physical feeling.’ Even then Hume’s assertion is too unguarded according to Hume’s own showing. But the immediate point is the deep-seated alliance of consciousness with recollection both for Plato and for Hume.

Here we maintain the doctrine that, in the analysis of the origination of any conscious feeling, some component physical feelings are to be found; and conversely, whenever there 1s consciousness, there is some component of conceptual functioning. For the abstract element in the concrete fact is exactly what provokes our consciousness. The consciousness is what arises in some process of synthesis of physical and mental operations. In this doctrine of ideas, Locke goes further than Hume and is, as I think, more accurate in expressing the facts; though Hume adds something which Locke omits.