Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

The difficulties of all schools of modern philosophy lie in the fact that, having accepted the subjectivist principle, they continue to use philosophical categories derived | from another point of view. These categories are not wrong, but they deal with abstractions unsuitable for metaphysical use. It is for this reason that the notions of the ‘extensive continuum’ and of ‘presentation immediacy’ require such careful discussion from every point of view. The notions of the ‘green leaf’ and of the ‘round ball’ are at the base of traditional metaphysics. They have generated two misconceptions: one is the concept of vacuous actuality, void of subjective experience; and the other is the concept of quality inherent in substance. In their proper character, as high abstractions, both of these notions are of the utmost pragmatic use. In fact, language has been formed chiefly to express such conp. 254cepts. It is for this reason that language, in its ordinary usages, penetrates but a short distance into the principles of metaphysics. Finally, the reformed subjectivist principle must be repeated: that apart from the experiences of subjects there is nothing, nothing, nothing, bare nothingness.

It is now evident that the final analogy to philosophies of the Hegelian school, noted in the Preface, is not accidental. The universe is at once the multiplicity of rés vere and the solidarity of rés vere. The solidarity is itself the efficiency of the macroscopic res vera, embodying the principle of unbounded permanence acquiring novelty through flux. The multiplicity is composed of microscopic rés vere, each embodying the principle of bounded flux acquiring ‘everlasting’ permanence. On one side, the one becomes many; and on the other side, the many become one. But what becomes is always a res vera, and the concresence of a res vera is the development of a subjective aim. This development is nothing else than the Hegelian development of an idea. The elaboration of this aspect of the philosophy of organism, with the purpose of obtaining an interpretation of the religious experience of mankind, is undertaken in Part V of these lectures.

Cosmological story, in every part and in every chapter, relates the interplay of the static vision and the dynamic history. But the whole story is comprised within the account of the subjective concrescence of rés vere.

CHAPTER VIII
SYMBOLIC REFERENCE

SECTION I

THE pure mode of presentational immediacy gives no information as to the past or the future. It merely presents an illustrated portion of the presented duration. It thereby defines a cross-section of the universe: but does not in itself define on which side lies the past, and on which side the future. In order to solve such questions we now come to the interplay between the two pure modes. ‘This mixed mode of perception is here named ‘symbolic reference.’ The failure to lay due emphasis on symbolic reference is one of the reasons for metaphysical difficulties; it has reduced the notion of ‘meaning’ to a mystery.

The first principle, explanatory of symbolic reference, is that for such reference a ‘common ground’ is required. By this necessity for a ‘common ground’ it is meant that there must be components in experience which are directly recognized as identical in each of the pure perceptive modes. In the transition to a higher phase of experience, there is a concrescence in which prehensions in the two modes are brought into a unity of feeling: this concrescent unity arises from a congruity of their subjective forms in virtue of the’ identity relation between the two prehensions, owing to some components in common. Thus the symbolic reference belongs to one of the later originative phases of experience. These later phases are distinguished by their new element of originative freedom. Accordingly, while the two pure perceptive modes are incapable of error, symbolic reference introduces this possibility. When human experience is in question, ‘per-

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ception’ almost always means ‘perception in the mixed mode of symbolic reference.’ Thus, in general, human perception is subject to error, because, in respect to those components most clearly in consciousness, it is interpretative. In fact, error is the mark of the higher organisms, and is the schoolmaster by whose agency there is upward evolution. For example, the evolutionary use of intelligence is that it enables the individual to profit by error without being slaughtered by it. But at present, we are not considering conceptual or intellectual functioning. One main element of common ground, shared between the two pure modes, is the presented locus. This locus enters subordinately into the perceptive mode of causal efficacy, vaguely exemplifying its participation in the general scheme of extensive interconnection, involved in the real potentiality. It is not disclosed by that perceptive mode in any other way; at least it is not directly disclosed. The further disclosure must be indirect, since contemporary events are exactly those which are neither causing, nor caused by, the percipient actual occasion. Now, although the various causal pasts (ie. ‘actual worlds’) of the contemporary actual occasions are not wholly identical with the causal past of the percipient actual occasion, yet, so far as important relevance is concerned, these causal pasts are practically identical. Thus there is, in the mode of causal efficacy, a direct perception of those antecedent actual occasions which are causally efficacious both for the percipient and for the relevant events in the presented locus. The percipient therefore, under the limitation of its own perspective, prehends the causal influences to which the presented locus in its important regions is subjected. This amounts to an indirect perception of this locus, a perception in which the direct components belong to the pure mode of causal efficacy. If we now turn to the perceptive mode of presentational immediacy, the regions, perceived by direct and indirect knowledge respectively, are inverted in comparison with the other mode. The presented locus is directly illus-

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