Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

passages wherein he comes near to the doctrine of ‘objectification’ and near to Locke’s second doctrine of ‘ideas determined to particular existents.’ Anyhow, his conclusion immediately follows that, in perception, thus described, all that is perceived is that the object has extension and is implicated in a complex of extensive relatedness with the animal body of the percipient. Part of the difficulties of Cartesian philosophy, and of any philosophy which accepts this account as a complete account of perception, is to explain how we know more than this meagre fact about the world although our only avenue of direct knowledge limits us to this barren residium. Also, if this be all that we perceive about the physical world, we have no basis for ascribing the origination of the mediating sensa to any functioning of the human body. We are thus driven to the Cartesian duality of substances, bodies and minds. Perception is to be ascribed to mental functioning in respect to the barren extensive universe. We have already done violence to our immediate conviction by thus thrusting the human body out of the story; for, as Hume himself declares, we know that we see by our eyes, and taste by our palates. But when we have gone so far, it is inevitable to take a further step, and to discard our other conviction that we are perceiving a world of actual things within which we find ourselves. For a barren, extensive world is not really what we mean. We thus reduce perceptions to consciousness of impressions on the mind, consisting of sensa with ‘manners’ of relatedness. We then come to Hume, and to Kant. Kant’s philosophy is an endeavour to retrieve some meaning for the two convictions which we have successively ‘discarded. We have noted that Locke wavers in his account of perception, so that in the earlier portion of his Essay he agrees with Hume, and in the later portion with the philosophy of organism. We have also noted that Hume is inconsistent to the extent of arguing from a conviction which is discarded in his philosophy.

p. 188

SECTION VIII

Presentational immediacy illustrates the contemporary world in respect to its potentiality for extensive subdivision into atomic actualities and in respect to the scheme of perspective relationships which thereby eventuates. But it gives no information as to the actual atomization of this contemporary ‘real potentiality.’ By its limitations it exemplifies the doctrine, already stated above, that the contemporary world happens independently of the actual occasion with which it is contemporary. This is in fact the definition of contemporaneousness (cf. Part II, Ch. II, Sect. I); namely, that actual occasions, A and B, are mutually contemporary, when A does not contribute to the datum for B, and B does not contribute to the datum for A, except that both A and B are atomic regions in the potential scheme of spatio-temporal extensiveness which is a datum for both A and B.

Hume’s polemic respecting causation is, in fact, one prolonged, convincing argument that pure presentational immediacy does not disclose any causal influence, either whereby one actual entity is constitutive of the percipient actual entity, or whereby one perceived actual entity is constitutive of another perceived actual entity. The conclusion is that, in so far as concerns their disclosure by presentational immediacy, actual entities in the contemporary universe are causally independent of each other.

The two pure modes of perception in this way disclose a variety of loci defined by reference to the percipient occasion M. For example, there are the actual occasions of the settled world which provide the datum for M; these lie in M’s causal past. Again, there are the potential occasions for which M decides its own potentialities of contribution to their data; these lie in M’s causal future. There are also those actual occasions which lie neither in M’s causal past, nor in M’s causal future. Such actual occasions are called M’s ‘contemporaries.’ Thesep. 189 three loci are defined solely by reference to the pure mode of causal efficacy.

We now turn to the pure mode of presentational immediacy. One great difference from the previous ways of obtaining loci at once comes into view. In considering the causal mode, the past and the future were defined positively, and the contemporaries of M were defined negatively as lying neither in M’s past nor in M’s future. In dealing with presentational immediacy the opposite way must be taken. For presentational immediacy gives positive information only about the immediate present as defined by itself. Presentational immediacy illustrates, by means of sensa, potential subdivisions within a cross-section of the world, which is in this way objectified for M. This cross-section is M’s immediate present. What is in this way illustrated is the potentiality for subdivision into actual atomic occasions; we can also recognize potentialities for subdivision of regions whose subdivisions remain unillustrated by any contrast of sensa. There are well-known limitations to such direct perceptions of unillustrated potentiality, a perception outrunning the real illustration of division by contrasted sensa. Such limitations constitute the minima sensibilia.

Hume’s polemic respecting causation constitutes a proof that M’s ‘immediate present’ lies within the locus of M’s contemporaries. The presentation to M of this locus, forming its immediate present, contributes to M’s datum two facts about the universe: one fact is that there is a ‘unison of becoming,’ constituting a positive relation of all the occasions in this community to any one of them. The members of this community share in a common immediacy; they are in ‘unison’ as to their becoming: that is to say, any pair of occasions in the locus are contemporaries. The other fact is the subjective illustration of the potential extensive subdivision with complete vagueness respecting the actual atomization. For example, the stone, which in the immediatep. 190 present is a group of many actual occasions, is illustrated as one grey spatial region. But, to go back to the former fact, the many actual entities of the present stone and the percipient are connected together in the ‘unison of immediate becoming.’ This community of concrescent occasions, forming M’s immediate present, thus establishes a principle of common relatedness, a principle realized as an element in M’s datum. This is the principle of mutual relatedness in the ‘unison of becoming.’ But this mutual relatedness is independent of the illustration by those sensa, through which presentational immediacy for M is effected. Also the illustration by these sensa has unequal relevance for M, throughout the locus. In its spatially remote parts it becomes vaguer and vaguer, fainter and fainter; and yet the principle of ‘unison of becoming’ still holds, in despite of the fading importance of the sensa. We thus find that the locus—namely, M’s immediate present—is determined by the condition of ‘mutual unison’ independently of variations of relevant importance in M’s illustrative sensa, and extends to their utmost bounds of faintness, and is equally determinate beyond such bounds. We thus gain the conception of a locus in which any two atomic actualities are in ‘concrescent unison,’ and which is particularized by the fact that M belongs to it, and so do all actual occasions belonging to extensive regions which lie in M’s immediate present as illustrated by importantly relevant sensa. This complete region is the prolongation of M’s immediate present beyond M’s direct perception, the prolongation being effected by the principle of ‘concrescent unison.’