Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

An eternal object realized in respect to its pure potentiality as related to determinate logical subjects is termed a ‘propositional feeling’ in the mentality of the actual occasion in question. The consciousness belonging to an actual occasion is its sub-phase of intellectual supplementation, when that sub-phase is not purely trivial. This sub-phase is the eliciting, into feeling, the full contrast between mere propositional potentiality and realized fact.

SECTION V

To sum up: There are two species of process, mascroscopic process, and microscopic process. The macroscopic process is the transition from attained actuality to actuality in attainment; while the microscopic process is the conversion of conditions which are merely real into determinate actuality. The former process effects thep. 327 transition from the ‘actual’ to the ‘merely real’; and the latter process effects the growth from the real to the actual. The former process is efficient; the latter process in teleological. The future is merely real, without being actual; whereas the past is a nexus of actualities. The actualities are constituted by their real genetic phases. The present is the immediacy of teleological process whereby reality becomes actual. The former process provides the conditions which really govern attainment; whereas the latter process provides the ends actually attained. The notion of ‘organism’ is combined with that of ‘process’ in a twofold manner. The community of actual things is an organism; but it is not a static organism. It is an incompletion in process of production. Thus the expansion of the universe in respect to actual things is the first meaning of ‘process’; and the universe in any stage of its expansion is the first meaning of ‘organism.’ In this sense, an organism is a nexus.

Secondly, each actual entity is itself only describable as an organic process. It repeats in microcosm what the universe is in macrocosm. It is a process proceeding from phase to phase, each phase being the real basis from which its successor proceeds towards the completion of the thing in question. Each actual entity bears in its constitution the ‘reasons’ why its conditions are what they are. These ‘reasons’ are the other actual entities objectified for it.

An ‘object’ is a transcendent element characterizing that definiteness to which our ‘experience’ has to conform. In this sense, the future has objective reality in the present, but no formal actuality. For it is inherent in the constitution of the immediate, present actuality that a future will supersede it. Also conditions to which that future must conform, including real relationships to the present, are really objective in the immediate actuality.

Thus each actual entity, although complete so far as concerns its microscopic process, is yet incomplete by reason of its objective inclusion of the mascroscopic8 PROCESS AND BEALITYp. 8 process. It really experiences a future which must be actual, although the completed actualities of that future are undetermined. In this sense, each actual occasion experiences its own objective immortality.

Norn. The function here ascribed to an ‘object’ is in general agreement with a paragraph (p. 249, 2d edition) in Professor Kemp Smith’s Commentary on Kant’s Critique, where he is considering Kant’s ‘Objective Deduction’ as in the first edition of the Critique: “When we examine the objective, we find that the primary characteristic distinguishing it from the subjective is that it lays a compulsion upon our minds, constraining us to think about it in a certain way. By an object is meant something which will not allow us to think at haphazard.”

There is of course the vital difference, among others, that where Kemp Smith, expounding Kant, writes ‘thinking,’ the philosophy of organism substitutes ‘experiencing.’

PART III
THE THEORY OF PREHENSIONS

ABSTRACT

CuaptTer I. Frenines

SECTION

i.

i.

2G

XII.

Genetic and Morphological Analysis; Genetic Consideration is Analysis of the Concrescence, The Actual Entity Formaliter; Morphological Analysis is Analysis of the Actual Entity as Concrete, Spatialized, Objective.

Finite Truth, Division into Prehensions; Succession of Phases,
Integral Prehensions in Formation; Five Factors: Subject,
Initial Data, Elimination, Objective Datum, Subjective
Form; Feeling is Determinate.

. Feeling cannot be Abstracted from its Subject; Subject, Aim at the Feeler, Final Cause, Causa Sut.

. Categories of Subjective Unity, of Objective Identity, of

Objective Diversity.

. Category of Subjective Unity; The One Subject is the Final

End Conditioning Each Feeling, Episode in Self-production; Pre-established Harmony, Self-Consistency of a Proposition, Subjective Aim; Category of Objective Identity, One Thing has one Role, no Duplicity, One Ground of Incompatibility; Category of Objective Diversity, No Diverse Elements with Identity of Function, Another Ground of Incompatibility.

. World as a Transmitting Medium; Explanation; Negative

Prehensions, with Subjective Forms.

. Application of the Categories. . Application (Continued).

Nexus.

. Subjective Forms; Classification of Feelings according to

Data; Simple Physical Feelings, Conceptual Feelings, Transmuted Feelings; Subjective Forms not Determined by Data, Conditioned by them.

Subjective Form, Qualitative Pattern, Quantitative Pattern;
Intensity; Audition of Sound.

Prehensions not Atomic, Mutual Sensitivity; Indefinite Number of Prehensions; Prehensions as Components in the Satisfaction and Their Genetic Growth; Justification of the Analysis of the Satisfaction, Eighth and Ninth Categories of Explanation.

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CuHapter II]. Tue Primary FEELINGS

SECTION

I.

It;

IV.

it

Il.

Simple Physical Feeling, Initial Datum is One Actual Entity, Objective Datum is one Feeling Entertained by that one Actual Entity; Act of Causation, Objective Datum the Cause, Simple Physical Feeling the Effect; Synonymously ‘Causal Feelings’; Primitive Act of Perception, Initial Datum is Actual Entity Perceived, Objective Datum is the Perspective, In general not Conscious Perception; Reason for ‘Perspective’; Vector Transmission of Feeling, Re-enaction, Conformal; Irreversibility of Time; Locke; Eternal Objects Relational, Two-Way Réle, Vector-Transference, Reproduction, Permanence; Quanta of Feeling Transferred, Quantum Theory in Physics, Physical Memory; Atomism, Continuity, Causation, Memory, Perception, Quality, Quantity, Extension.

. Conceptual Feelings, Positive and Negative Prehensions; Creative Urge Dipolar; Datum is an Eternal Object; Exclusiveness of Eternal Objects as Determinants, Definiteness, Incompatibility.

Subjective Form of Conceptual Prehension is Valuation; Integration introduces Valuation into Impure Feelings, Intensiveness; Three Characteristics of Valuation: (i) Mutual Sensitivity of Subjective Forms, (11) Determinant of Procedure of Integration, (111) Determinant of Intensive Emphasis.

Consciousness is Subjective Form; Requires its Peculiar Datum; Recollection, Plato, Hume; Conscious Feelings Always Impure, Requires Integration of Physical and Conceptual Feelings; Affirmation and Negative Contrast; Not all Impure Feelings Conscious.

Cuapter III. Tur TRANSMISSION OF FEELINGS

. Ontological Principle, Determination of Initiation of Feeling;

Phases of Concrescence; God, Inexorable Valuation, Subjective Aim; Self-Determination Imaginative in Origin, Re-enaction.

Pure Physical Feelings, Hybrid Physical Feelings; Hybrid Feelings Transmuted into Pure Physical Feelings; Disastrous Separation of Body and Mind Avoided; Hume’s Principle, Hybrid Feelings with God as Datum.

Application of First Categoreal Obligation; Supplementary Phase arising from Conceptual Origination; Application of Fourth and Fifth Categoreal Obligations; Conceptual Reversion; Ground of Identity, Aim at Contrast.

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