Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

‘satisfaction,’ and this arises out of its datum by the operations constituting its ‘process.’ Satisfactions can be classified by reference to ‘triviality,’ ‘vagueness,’ ‘narrowness,’ ‘width.’ Triviality and vagueness are characteristics in the satisfaction which have their origins respectively in opposed characteristics in the datum. Triviality arises from lack of coordination in the factors of the datum, so that no feeling arising from one factor is reinforced by any feeling arising from another factor. In other words, the specific constitution of the actual entity in question is not such as to elicit depth of feeling from contrasts thus presented. Incompatibility has predominated over contrast. Then the process can involve no coordinating intensification either from a reinforced narrowness, or from enhancement of relevance due to the higher contrasts derived from harmonized width. Triviality is due to the wrong sort of width; that is to say, it is due to width without any reinforced narrowness in its higher categories. Harmony is this combination of width and narrowness. Some narrow concentration on a limited set of effects is essential for depth; but the difference arises in the levels of the categories of contrast involved. A high category involves unplumbed potentiality for the realization of depth in its lower components. Thus ‘triviality’ arises from excess of incompatible differentiation.

On the other hand, ‘vagueness’ is due to excess of identification. In the datum the objectifications of various actual entities are replicas with faint coordinations of perspective contrast. Under these conditions the contrasts between the various objectifications are faint, and there is deficiency in supplementary feeling discriminating the objects from each other. There can thus be intensive narrowness in the prehension of the whole nexus, by reason of the common character; combined with vagueness, which is the irrelevance of the differences between the definite actual entities of the nexus. The objectified entities reinforce each other by their likeness. But there is lack of differentiation among the component objectifications owing to the deficiency in relevant contrasts.

In this way a group of actual entities contributes to the satisfaction as one extensive whole. It is divisible, but the actual divisions, and their sporadic differences of character, have sunk into comparative irrelevance beside the one character belonging to the whole and any of its parts.

By reason of vagueness, many count as one, and are subject to indefinite possibilities of division into such multifold unities. When there is such vague prehension, the differences between the actual entities so prehended are faint chaotic factors in the environment, and have thereby been relegated to irrelevance. Thus vagueness is an essential condition for the narrowness which is one condition for depth of relevance. It enables a background to contribute its relevant quota, and it enables a social group in the foreground to gain concentrated relevance for its community of character. The right chaos, and the right vagueness, are jointly required for any effective harmony. They produce the massive simplicity which has been expressed by the term ‘narrowness.’ Thus chaos is not to be identified with evil; for harmony requires the due coordination of chaos, vagueness, narrowness, and width.

According to this account, the background in which the environment is set must be discriminated into two layers. There is first the relevant background, providing a massive systematic uniformity. This background is the presupposed world to which all ordinary propositions refer. Secondly, there is the more remote chaotic background which has merely an irrelevant triviality, so far as concerns direct objectification in the actual entity in question. This background represents those entities in the actual world with such perspective remoteness that there is even a chaos of diverse cosmic epochs. In the background there is triviality, vagueness, and massive uniformity; in the foreground discrimination andp. 172 contrasts, but always negative prehensions of irrelevant diversities.

SECTION II

Intensity is the reward of narrowness. The domination of the environment by a few social groups is the factor producing both the vagueness of discrimination between actual entities and the intensification of relevance of common characteristics. These are the two requisites for narrowness. The lower organisms have low-grade types of narrowness; the higher organisms have intensified contrasts in the higher categories. In describing the capacities, realized or unrealized, of an actual occasion, we have, with Locke, tacitly taken human experience as an example upon which to found the generalized description required for metaphysics. But when we turn to the lower organisms we have first to determine which among such capacities fade from realization into irrelevance, that is to say, by comparison with human experience which is our standard.

In any metaphysical scheme founded upon the Kantian or Hegelian traditions, experience is the product of operations which lie among the higher of the human modes of functioning. For such schemes, ordered experience is the result of schematization of modes of thought, concerning causation, substance, quality, quantity.

The process by which experiental unity is attained, is thereby conceived in the guise of modes of thought. The exception is to be found in Kant’s preliminary sections on “Transcendental Aesthetic,’ by which he provides space and time. But Kant, following Hume, assumes the radical disconnection of impressions qua data; and therefore conceives his transcendental aesthetic as to be the mere description of a subjective process appropriating the data by orderliness of feeling.

The philosophy of organism aspires to construct a critique of pure feeling, in the philosophical position inp. 173 which Kant put his Critique of Pure Reason. This should also supersede the remaining Critiques required in the Kantian philosophy. Thus in the organic philosophy Kant’s ‘Transcendental Aesthetic’ becomes a distorted fragment of what should have been his main topic. The datum includes its own interconnections, and the first stage of the process of feeling is the reception into the responsive conformity of feeling whereby the datum, which is mere potentiality, becomes the individualized basis for a complex unity of realization.

This conception, as found in the philosophy of organism, 1s practically identical with Locke’s ways of thought in the latter half of his Hssay. He speaks of the ideas in the perceived objects, and tacitly presupposes their identification with corresponding ideas in the perceiving mind. The ideas in the objects have been appropriated by the subjective functioning of the perceiving mind. This mode of phraseology can be construed as a casual carelessness of speech on the part of Locke, or a philosophic inconsistency. But apart from this inconsistency Locke’s philosophy falls to pieces; as in fact was its fate in the hands of Hume.