Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

It follows from the first category of explanation that ‘becoming’ is a creative advance into novelty. It is for this reason that the meaning of the phrase ‘the actual world’ is relative to the becoming of a definite actual entity which is both novel and actual, relatively to that meaning, and to no other meaning of that phrase. Thus, conversely, each actual entity corresponds to a meaning of ‘the actual world’ peculiar to itself. This point is dealt with more generally in categories of explanation (111) and (v). An actual world is a nexus; and the actual world of one actual entity sinks to the level of a subordinate nexus in actual worlds beyond that actual entity.

The first, the fourth, the eighteenth, and twentyseventh categories state different aspects of one and the same general metaphysical truth. The first category states the doctrine in a general way: that every ultimate actuality embodies in its own essence what Alexander *

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Cf. “Artistic Ceeation avd Cosmic Creation,” Proc. Brit. Acad., 1927,
Vol. XIII.

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terms ‘a principle of unrest,’ namely, its becoming. The fourth category applies this doctrine to the very notion of an ‘entity.’ It asserts that the notion of an ‘entity’ means ‘an element contributory to the process of becoming. We have in this category the utmost generalization of the notion of ‘relativity.’ The eighteenth category asserts that the obligations imposed on the becoming of any particular actual entity arise from the constitutions of other actual entities.

The four categories of explanation, (x) to (xiii), constitute the repudiation of the notion of vacuous actuality, which haunts realistic philosophy. The term ‘vacuous actuality’ here means the notion of a res vera devoid of subjective immediacy. This repudiation is fundamental for the organic philosophy (cf. Part II, Ch. VII, ‘The Subjectivist Principle’). The notion of ‘vacuous actuality’ is very closely allied to the notion of the ‘inherence of quality in substance.’ Both notions—in their misapplication as fundamental metaphysical categories— find their chief support in a misunderstanding of the true analysis of ‘presentational immediacy’ (cf. Part II, Ch. II, Sects. I and V).

It is fundamental to the metaphysical doctrine of the philosophy of organism, that the notion of an actual entity as the unchanging subject of change is completely abandoned. An actual entity is at once the subject experiencing and the superject of its experiences. It is subject-superject, and neither half of this description can for a moment be lost sight of. The term ‘subject’ will be mostly employed when the actual entity is considered in respect to its own real internal constitution. But ‘subject’ is always to be construed as an abbreviation of ‘subject-superject.’

The ancient doctrine that ‘no one crosses the same river twice’ is extended. No thinker thinks twice; and, to put the matter more generally, no subject experiences twice. This is what Locke ought to have meant by his doctrine of time as a ‘perpetual perishing.’

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This repudiation directly contradicts Kant’s ‘First Analogy of Experience’ in either of its ways of phrasing (1st or 2d edition). In the philosophy of organism it is not ‘substance’ which is permanent, but ‘form.’ Forms suffer changing relations; actual entities ‘perpetually perish’ subjectively, but are immortal objectively. Actuality in perishing acquires objectivity, while it loses subjective immediacy. It loses the final causation which is its internal principle of unrest, and it acquires efficient causation whereby it is a ground of obligation characterizing the creativity.

Actual occasions in their ‘formal’ constitutions are devoid of all indetermination. Potentiality has passed into realization. They are complete and determinate matter of fact, devoid of all indecision. They form the ground of obligation. But eternal objects, and propositions, and some more complex sorts of contrasts, involve in their own natures indecision. They are, like all entities, potentials for the process of becoming. Their ingression expresses the definiteness of the actuality in question. But their own natures do not in themselves disclose in what actual entities this potentiality of ingression is realized. Thus they involve indetermination in a sense more complete than do the former set.

A multiplicity merely enters into process through its individual members. The only statements to be made about a multiplicity express how its individual members enter into the process of the actual world. Any entity which enters into process in this way belongs to the multiplicity, and no other entities do belong to it. It can be treated as a unity for this purpose, and this purpose only. For example, each of the six kinds of entities just mentioned are multiplicities (i.e., not the individual entities of the kinds, but the collective kinds of the entities). A multiplicity has solely a disjunctive relationship to the actual world. The ‘universe’ comprising the absolutely initial data for an actual entity is a multiplicity. The treatment of a multiplicity as though it

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had the unity belonging to an entity of any one of the other six kinds produces logical errors. Whenever the word ‘entity’ is used, it is to be assumed, unless otherwise stated, that it refers to an entity of one of the six kinds, and not to a multiplicity.

There is no emergent evolution concerned with a multiplicity, so that every statement about a multiplicity is a disjunctive statement about its individual members. Entities of any of the first six kinds, and generic contrasts, will be called ‘proper entities.’

In its development the subsequent discussion of the philosophy of organism is governed by the belief that the subject-predicate form of proposition is concerned with high abstractions, except in its application to subjective forms. This sort of abstraction, apart from this exception, is rarely relevant to metaphysical description. The dominance of Aristotelian logic from the late classical period onwards has imposed on metaphysical thought the categories naturally derivative from its phraseology. This dominance of his logic does not seem to have been characteristic of Aristotle’s own metaphysical speculations. The divergencies, such as they are, in these lectures from other philosophical doctrines mostly depend upon the fact that many philosophers, who in their explicit statements criticize the Aristotelian notion of ‘substance,’ yet implicitly throughout their discussions presuppose that the ‘subject-predicate’ form of proposition embodies the finally adequate mode of statement about the actual world. The evil produced by the Aristotelian ‘primary substance’ is exactly this habit of metaphysical emphasis upon the ‘subject-predicate’ form of proposition.

CHAPTER III
SOME DERIVATIVE NOTIONS

SECTION I