Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

In this important passage, Locke enunciates the main doctrines of the philosophy of organism, namely: the principle of relativity; the relational character of eternal objects, whereby they constitute the forms of the objectifications of actual entities for each other; the composite character of an actual entity (i.e. a substance) ; the notion of ‘power’ as making a principal ingredient in that of actual entity (substance). In this latter notion, Locke adumbrates both the ontological principle, and also the principle that the ‘power’ of one actual entity on the other is simply how the former is objectified in the constitution of the other. Thus the problem of perception and the problem of power are one and the same, at least so far as perception is reduced to mere prehension of actual entities. Perception, in the sense of consciousness of such prehension, requires the additional factor of the conceptual prehension of eternal objects, and a process of integration of the two factors (cf. Part III).

Locke’s doctrine of ‘power’ is reproduced in the philosophy of organism by the doctrine of the two types of objectification, namely, (a) ‘causal objectification,’ and (8) ‘presentational objectification.’

In ‘causal objectification’ what is felt subjectively by the objectified actual entity is transmitted objectively to the concrescent actualities which supersede it. In Locke’s phraseology the objectified actual entity is then exerting ‘power.’ In this type of objectification the eternal objects, relational between object and subject, express the formal constitution of the objectified actual entity.

In ‘presentational objectification’ the relational eternal objects fall into two sets, one set contributed by the ‘extensive’ perspective of the perceived from the position of the perceiver, and the other set by the antecedent concrescent phases of the perceiver. What is ordinarily termed ‘perception’ is consciousness of presentational objectification. But according to the philosophy of organism there can be consciousness of both types of objectification. There can be such consciousness of bothp. 92 types because, according to this philosophy, the knowable is the complete nature of the knower, at least such phases of it as are antecedent to that operation of knowing.

Locke misses one essential doctrine, namely, that the doctrine of internal relations makes it impossible to attribute ‘change’ to any actual entity. Every actual entity is what it is, and is with its definite status in the universe, determined by its internal relations to other actual entities. ‘Change’ is the description of the adventures of eternal objects in the evolving universe of actual things.

The doctrine of internal relations introduces another consideration which cannot be overlooked without error. Locke considers the ‘real essence’ and the ‘nominal essence’ of things. But on the theory of the general relativity of actual things between each other, and of the internality of these relations, there are two distinct notions hidden under the term ‘real essence,’ both of importance. Locke writes (III, III, 15): “Essence may be taken for the being of anything, whereby it is what it is. And thus the real internal (but generally in substances unknown) constitution of things, whereon their discoverable qualities depend, may be called their ‘essence.’ . . . It is true, there is ordinarily supposed a real constitution of the sorts of things: and it is past doubt there must be some real constitution, on which any collection of simple ideas co-existing must depend. But it being evident that things are ranked under names into sorts or species only as they agree to certain abstract ideas to which we have annexed these names, the essence of each genus or sort comes to be nothing but that abstract idea, which the general or ‘sortal’ (if I may have leave so to call it from ‘sort’ as I do ‘general’ from ‘genus’) name stands for. And thus we shall find to be that which the word ‘essence’ imparts in its familiar use. These two sorts of essences, I suppose, may not unfitly be termed, the one the ‘real,’ the other the ‘nominal’ essence.”

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The fundamental notion of the philosophy of organism is expressed in Locke’s phrase, “it is past doubt there must be some real constitution, on which any collection of simple ideas co-existing must depend.” Locke makes it plain (ef. II, II, 1) that by a ‘simple idea’ he means the ingression in the actual entity (illustrated by ‘a piece of wax,’ ‘a piece of ice,’ ‘a rose’) of some abstract quality which is not complex (illustrated by ‘softness,’ ‘warmth,’ ‘whiteness’). For Locke such simple ideas, coexisting in an actual entity, require a real constitution for that entity. Now in the philosophy of organism, passing beyond Locke’s explicit statement, the notion of a real constitution is taken to mean that the eternal objects function by introducing the multiplicity of actual entities as constitutive of the actual entity in question. Thus the constitution is ‘real’ because it assigns its status in the real world to the actual entity. In other words the actual entity, in virtue of being what it is, is also where it is. It is somewhere because it is some actual thing with its correlated actual world. This is the direct denial of the Cartesian doctrine, “. . . an existent thing which requires nothing but itself in order to exist.” It is also inconsistent with Aristotle’s phrase, “neither asserted of a subject, nor present in a subject.”

I am certainly not maintaining that Locke grasped explicitly the implications of his words as thus developed for the philosophy of organism. But it is a short step from a careless phrase to a flash of insight; nor is it unbelievable that Locke saw further into metaphysical problems than some of his followers. But abandoning the question of what Locke had in his own mind, the ‘organic doctrine’ demands a ‘real essence’ in the sense of a complete analysis of the relations, and inter-relations of the actual entities which are formative of the actual entity in question, and an ‘abstract. essence’ in which the specified actual entities are replaced by the notions of unspecified entities in such a combination; this is the notion of an unspecified actual entity. Thus the realp. 94 essence involves real objectifications of specified actual entities; the abstract essence is a complex eternal object. There is nothing self-contradictory in the thought of many actual entities with the same abstract essence; but there can only be one actual entity with the same real essence. For the real essence indicates ‘where’ the entity is, that is to say, its status in the real world; the abstract essence omits the particularity of the status.