Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

so far as there is trivial order, there must be trivialized actual entities. The right co-ordination of the negative prehensions is one secret of mental progress; but unless some systematic scheme of relatedness characterizes the environment, there will be nothing left whereby to constitute vivid prehension of the world. The low-grade organism is merely the summation of the forms of energy which flow in upon it in all their multiplicity of detail. It receives, and it transmits; but it fails to simplify into intelligible system. The physical theory of the structural flow of energy has to do with the transmission of simple physical feelings from individual actuality to individual actuality. Thus some sort of quantum-theory in physics, relevant to the existing type of cosmic order, is to be expected. The physical theory of alternative forms of energy, and of the transformation from one form to another form, ultimately depends upon transmission conditioned by some exemplification of the categories of transmutation and reversion.

SECTION V

The seventh categoreal condition governs the efficacy of conceptual feelings both in the completion of their own subjects, and also in the objectifications of their subjects in subsequent concrescence. It is the category of ‘subject harmony.’

Category VII. The Category of Subjective Harmony. The valuations of conceptual feelings are mutually determined by their adaptation to be joint elements in a satisfaction aimed at by the subject.

This categoreal condition should be compared with the category of ‘subjective unity,’ and also with the category of ‘conceptual reversion.’ In the former category the intrinsic inconsistencies, termed ‘logical,’ are the formative conditions in the pre-established harmony. In this seventh category, and in the category of reversion, aesthetic adaptation for an end is the formative condition in the vre-established harmony. These three categoriesp. 390 express the ultimate particularity of feelings. For the superject which is their outcome is also the subject which is operative in their production. They are the creation of their own creature. The point to be noticed is that the actual entity, in a state of process during which it is not fully definite, determines its own ultimate definiteness. This is the whole point of moral responsibility. Such responsibility is conditioned by the limits of the data, and by the categoreal conditions of concrescence.

But autonomy is negligible unless the complexity is such that there is great energy in the production of conceptual feelings according to the category of reversion. This category of reversion has to be considered in connection with the category of aesthetic harmony. For the contrasts produced by reversion are contrasts required for the fulfilment of the aesthetic ideal. Unless there is complexity, ideal diversities lead to physical impossibilities, and thence to impoverishment. It requires a complex constitution to stage diversities as consistent contrasts.

It is only by reason of the categories of subjective unity, and of subjective harmony, that the process constitutes the character of the product, and that conversely the analysis of the product discloses the process.

There is, however, always this limitation to the security of direct knowledge, based on direct physical feeling, namely, that the creative emergence can import into the physical feelings of the actual world pseudo-determinants which arise from the concepts entertained in that actual world, and not from the physical feelings in that world.

This possibility of error is peculiarly evident in the case of that special class of physical feelings which belong to the mode of ‘presentational immediacy.’

CHAPTER IV
PROPOSITIONS AND FEELINGS

SECTION I

THE nature of consciousness has not yet been adequately analysed. The initial basic feelings, physical and conceptual, have been mentioned, and so also has the final synthesis into the affirmation-negation contrast. But between the beginning and the end of the integration into consciousness, there lies the origination of a ‘propositional feeling.’ A propositional feeling is a feeling whose objective datum is a proposition. Such a feeling does not in itself involve consciousness. But all forms of consciousness arise from ways of integration of propositional feelings with other feelings, either physical feelings or conceptual feelings. Consciousness belongs to the subjective forms of such feelings.

A proposition enters into experience as the entity forming the datum of a complex feeling derived from the integration of a physical feeling with a conceptual feeling." Now a conceptual feeling does not refer to the actual world, in the sense that the history of this actual world has any peculiar relevance to its datum. This datum is an eternal object; and an eternal object refers only to the purely general any among undetermined actual entities. In itself an eternal object evades any selection among actualities or epochs. You cannot know what is red by merely thinking of redness. You can only find red things by adventuring amid physical experiences in this actual world. This doctrine is the ultimate ground of empiricism; namely, that eternal objects tell no tales as to their ingressions.

1 Cf., also ‘Physical Purposes’ considered in Ch. V.
3291

p. 392

But now a new kind of entity presents itself. Such entities are the tales that perhaps might be told about particular actualities. Such entities are neither actual entities, nor eternal objects, nor feelings. They are propositions. A proposition must be true or false. Herein a proposition differs from an eternal object; for no eternal object is ever true or false. This difference between propositions and eternal objects arises from the fact that truth and falsehood are always grounded upon a reason. But according to the ontological principle (the seventeenth ‘category of explanation’), a reason is always a reference to determinate actual entities. Now an eternal object, in itself, abstracts from all determinate actual entities, including even God. It is merely referent to any such entities, in the absolutely general sense of any. Then there can be no reason upon which to found the truth or falsehood of an eternal object. The very diversity of eternal objects has for its reason their diversity of functioning in this actual world.