actual entity, the ‘superject’ which is familiarly termed the ‘subject.’ In a sense this satisfaction is two-dimen- sional. It has a dimension of narrowness, and a dimen- sion of width. The dimension of narrowness refers to the intensities of individual emotions arising out of indi- vidual components in the datum. In this dimension, the higher levels of coordination are irrelevant. The dimen- sion of width arises out of the higher levels of coordi- nation, by which the intensities in the dimension of nar- rowness become subordinated to a coordination which depends upon the higher levels of comparison. The savouring of the complexity of the universe can enter into satisfaction only through the dimension of width. The emotional depths at the low levels have their limits: the function of width is to deepen the ocean of feeling, and to remove the diminutions of depth produced by the interference of diverse emotions uncoordinated at a higher level. In the place of the Hegelian hierarchy of categories of thought, the philosophy of organism finds a hierarchy of categories of feeling.
The reformed subjectivist principle adopted by the philosophy of organism is merely an alternative state- ment of the principle of relativity (the fourth Category of Explanation). This principle states that it belongs to the nature of a ‘being’ that it is a potential for every ‘becoming.’ Thus all things are to be conceived as quali- fications of actual occasions. According to the ninth Category of Explanation, how an actual entity becomes constitutes what that actual entity is. This principle states that the being of a res vera is constituted by its ‘becoming.’ The way in which one actual entity is quali- fied by other actual entities is the ‘experience’ of the actual world enjoyed by that actual entity, as subject. The subjectivist principle is that the whole universe con- sists of elements disclosed in the analysis of the experi- ences of subjects. Process is the becoming of experience.
BE teoUBS EeRIVIST “PRINCIPLE. 2253
It follows that the philosophy of organism entirely accepts the subjectivist bias of modern philosophy. It also accepts Hume’s doctrine that nothing is to be received into the philosophical scheme which is not dis- coverable as an element in subjective experience. This is the ontological principle. Thus Hume’s demand that causation be describable as an element in experience is, on these principles, entirely justifiable. The point of the criticisms of Hume’s procedure is that we have direct intuition of inheritance and memory: thus the only prob: lem is, so to describe the general character of experience that these intuitions may be included. It is here that Hume fails. Also those modern empiricists who substi- tute ‘law’ for ‘causation’ fail even worse than Hume. For ‘law’ no more satisfies Hume’s tests than does ‘causa- tion.’ There is no ‘impression’ of law, or of lawfulness. Even allowing memory, according to Humian principles what has happened in experience has happened in experi- ence, and that is all that can be said. Everything else is bluff, combined with the fraudulent insertion of ‘prob- ability’ into a conclusion which demands ‘blank igno- rance.’
The difficulties of all schools of modern philosophy lie in the fact that, having accepted the subjectivist princi- ple, 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 imme- diacy’ 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 con-
254 Process and Reality
cepts. 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 prin- ciple must be repeated: that apart from the experiences of subjects there is nothing, nothing, nothing, bare noth- ingness.
It is now evident that the final analogy to philosophies of the Hegelian school, noted in the Preface, is not acci- dental. 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, embody- ing 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 develop- ment 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
THE pure mode of presentational immediacy gives no information as to the past or the future. It merely pre- sents 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 metaphysi- cal 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 percep- tive modes. In the transition to a higher phase of experi- ence, there is a concrescence in which prehensions in the two modes are brought into a unity of feeling: this con- crescent 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 free- dom. Accordingly, while the two pure perceptive modes are incapable of error, symbolic reference introduces this possibility. When human experience is in question, ‘per-
256 Process and Reality
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 interpre- tative. 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 intelli- gence 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 gen- eral 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 dis- closed. 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 con- cerned, 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 im- portant 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-
Symbolic Reference 257
trated by the sensa; while the causal past, the causal future, and the other contemporary events, are only indi- rectly perceived by means of their extensive relations to the presented locus. It must be remembered that the presented locus has its fourth dimension of temporal thickness ‘spatialized’ as the specious present of the per- cipient. Thus the presented locus, with the animal body of the percipient as the region from which perspectives are focussed, is the regional origin by reference to which in this perceptive mode the complete scheme of extensive regions isrendered determinate. The respective roles of the two perceptive modes in experience are aptly exemplified by the fact that all scientific observations, such as meas- urements, determinations of relative spatial position, determinations of sense-data such as colours, sounds, tastes, smells, temperature feelings, touch feelings, etc., are made in the perceptive mode of presentational imme- diacy; and that great care is exerted to keep this mode pure, that is to say, devoid of symbolic reference to causal efficacy. In this way accuracy is secured, in the sense that the direct observation is purged of all interpretation. On the other hand all scientific theory is stated in terms referring exclusively to the scheme of relatedness, which, so far as it is observed, involves the percepta in the pure mode of causal efficacy. It thus stands out at once, that what we want to know about, from the point of view either of curiosity or of technology, chiefly resides in those aspects of the world disclosed in causal efficacy: but that what we can distinctly register is chiefly to be found among the percepta in the mode of presentational immediacy.
The presented locus is a common ground for the sym- bolic reference, because it is directly and distinctly per- ceived in presentational immediacy, and is indistinctly and indirectly perceived in causal efficacy. In the latter mode, the indistinctness is such that the detailed geo- metrical relationships are, for the most part, incurably vague. Particular regions are, in this perceptive mode,