Process and Reality (Gifford Lectures, 1929) — Alfred North Whitehead

It is evident that an affirmative intuitive judgment is very analogous to a conscious perception. A conscious perception is a very simplified type of affirmative intui- tive judgment; and a direct affirmative intuitive judg- ment is a very sophisticated case of conscious perception. The difference between the two has its origin in the fact that one involves a perceptive feeling, and the other involves an imaginative feeling. Only one set of actual entities is involved in the formation of the perceptive feeling. These actual entities are the logical subjects of the proposition which is felt. But two sets of actual entities are involved in the formation of an imaginative feeling. Only one of these sets provides the logical sub- jects of the proposition which is felt; the other set is finally eliminated in the process of origination. The difference between the two feelings, the perceptive feeling and the imaginative feeling, does not therefore lie in the proposition which is felt. It lies in the emotional pat- terns of the two feelings. In either case this emotional pattern is derivative from the process of origination. In the case of the perceptive feeling, the emotional pattern reflects the close connection of the predicate with the logical subjects, throughout the process of origination. In the case of the imaginative feeling, this emotional pattern reflects the initial disconnection of the predicate from the logical subjects. This example illustrates that in the integration of feelings, components which are eliminated from the matter of the integral feeling may yet leave their mark on its emotional pattern. The triumph of consciousness comes with the negative intui- tive judgment. In this case there is a conscious feeling of what might be, and is not. The feeling directly con- cerns the definite negative prehensions enjoyed by its subject. It is the feeling of absence, and it feels this absence as produced by the definite exclusiveness of what is really present. Thus, the explicitness of negation,

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which is the peculiar characteristic of consciousness, is here at its maximum.

The two cases of intuitive judgment, namely, the
affirmative intuitive judgment and the negative intuitive
judgment, are comparatively rare. These two cases of
intuitive judgment, together with conscious perception,
correspond to what Locke calls ‘knowledge.’ Locke’s
section (IV, XIV, 4), on this subject is short enough to
be quoted in full: “Judgment is the presuming things to
be so without perceiving it. . . . Thus the mind has two
faculties conversant about truth and falsehood.

“First. Knowledge, whereby it certainly perceives, and
is undoubtedly satisfied of the agreement or disagreement
of any ideas.

“Secondly. Judgment, which is the putting ideas to-
gether, or separating them from one another in the mind,
when their certain agreement or disagreement is not
perceived, but presumed to be so; which is, as the word
imports, taken to be so before it certainly appears. And
if it so unites or separates them as in reality things are,
it is right judgment.”

What Locke calls ‘judgment’ is here termed ‘inferential judgment.’

The process of origination of a suspended judgment consists in (i) the ‘physical recollection’ and the ‘indica- tive feeling,’ (41) the ‘conceptual imagination,’ derivative from the ‘physical recollection,’ (iii) the ‘propositional imagination,’ derived by integration of the ‘indicative feeling’ with the ‘conceptual imagination,’ (iv) the ‘sus- pended judgment,’ derived by integration of the ‘indica- tive feeling’ with the ‘propositional imagination,’ the relation between the objectifying predicate and the imag- ined practice being such as to preclude either case of direct judgment.

The suspended judgment thus consists of the integra- tion of the imaginative feeling with the indicative feel- ing, in the case where the imagined predicate fails to find identification with the objectifying predicate, or with

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any part of it; but does find compatible contrast with it. It is the feeling of the contrast between what the logical subjects evidently are, and what the same subjects in addition may be. This suspended judgment is our con- sciousness of the limitations involved in objectification. If, in the comparison of an imaginative feeling with fact, we merely knew what 7s and what is not, then we should have no basis for discovering the work of objectification in effecting omissions from the formal constitutions of things. It is this additional knowledge of the compati- bility of what we imagine with what we physically feel, that gives this information. We must not oversimplify the formal constitutions of the higher grade of acts of concrescence by construing a suspended judgment as though it were a negative judgment. Our whole progress in scientific theory, and even in subtility of direct observa- tion, depends on the use of suspended judgments. It is to be noted that a suspended judgment is not a judgment of probability. It is a judgment of compatibility. The judgment tells us what may be additional information respecting the formal constitutions of the logical subjects, information which is neither included nor excluded by our direct perception. This is a judgment of fact con- cerning ourselves. Suspended judgments are weapons essential to scientific progress. But in intuitive judg- ments the emotional pattern may be dominated by indifference to truth or falsehood. We have then ‘con- scious imagination.’ We are feeling the actual world with the conscious imputation of imagined predicates be they true or false.

When we compare these three cases of intuitive judg-
ment (involving attention to truth) with conscious imagi-
nation (involving inattention to truth), that is to say,
with ‘imputative feeling,’ we note that, except in the
case of negative judgments, the datum of the conscious
imagination is identical with the datum of the corre-
sponding judgment. Nevertheless, the feelings are very
different in their emotional patterns. One emotional

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pattern is dominated by indifference to truth; and the other emotional pattern by attention to truth. This indifference to truth is otherwise to be expressed as readiness to eliminate the true objectifying pattern exemplified in the objective datum of the physical feeling in question; while the attention to truth is merely the refusal to eliminate this pattern. But these emotional elements in the subjective forms are not dictated by any diversity of data in the two feelings. For except in the case of the direct negative judgment, the datum is the same in both types of feeling. The emotional form of a feeling cannot be merely deduced from datum felt, though it has close relation to it. The emotional pat- tern in the subjective form of any one feeling arises from the subjective aim dominating the entire concrescent process. The other feelings of the subject may be con- ceived as catalytic agents. They are intellectually sep- arable from the feeling in question. But that feeling is in fact the outcome of the subjective aim of the subject which is its locus; and the emotional pattern is the peculiar way in which the subject asserts itself in its feeling. This explanation of the status of the emotional pattern is merely an application of the doctrine that a feeling appropriates elements of the universe, which in themselves are other than the subject; and absorbs these elements into the real internal constitution of its subject by synthesizing them in the unity of an emotional pattern expressive of its own subjectivity.

This mutual dependence of the emotional pattern of a feeling on the other feelings of the same subject, may be termed the ‘mutual sensitivity’ of feelings. It is also one aspect of the incurable ‘particularity’ of a feeling, in the sense that no feeling can be abstracted from its subject.

‘Physical purposes’ constitute a type of comparative feelings more primitive than the type of intellectual feel-

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ings. In general, it seems as though intellectual feelings are negligible, so as only to obtain importance in excep- tional actual entities. We have no means of testing this assumption in any crucial way. It is however the assump- tion usually made; and therefore it may be presumed that there is some evidence which persuades people to embrace the doctrine. But in fact no evidence, one way or the other, has ever been produced. We know that there are some few entities on the surface of this earth with intellectual feelings; and there our knowledge ends, so far as temporal entities are concerned.

In the more primitive type of comparative feelings indetermination as to its own ingressions—so prominent in intellectual feelings—is the aspect of the eternal object which is pushed into the background. In such a type of physical purposes the integration of a physical feeling and a conceptual feeling does not involve the reduction of the objective datum of the physical feeling to a mul- tiplicity of bare logical subjects. The objective datum remains the nexus that it is, exemplifying the eternal objects whose ingression constitutes its definiteness. Also the indeterminateness as to its own ingressions is eliminated from the eternal object which is the datum of the physical feeling. In the integral comparative feeling the datum is the contrast of the conceptual datum with the reality of the objectified nexus. The physical feeling is feeling a real fact; the conceptual feeling is valuing an abstract possibility. The new datum is the compatibility or incompatibility of the fact as felt with the eternal object as a datum in feeling. This synthesis of a pure abstraction with a real fact, as in feeling, is a generic contrast. In respect to physical purposes, the cosmologi- cal scheme which is here being developed, required us to hold that all actual entities include physical purposes. The constancy of physical purposes explains the per- sistence of the order of nature, and in particular of ‘enduring objects.’

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The chain of stages in which a physical purpose origi- nates is simpler than in the case of intellectual feelings: (i) there is a physical feeling; (ii) the primary concep- tual correlate of the physical feeling is generated, accord- ing to categoreal condition IV; (iii) this physical feeling is integrated with its conceptual correlate to form the physical purpose. Such physical purposes are called physical purposes of the first species.

In such a physical purpose, the datum is the generic contrast between the nexus, felt in the physical feeling, and the eternal object valued in the conceptual feeling. This eternal object is also exemplified as the pattern of the nexus. Thus the conceptual valuation now closes in upon the feeling of the nexus as it stands in the generic contrast, exemplifying the valued eternal object. This valuation according to the physical feeling endows the transcendent creativity with the character of adversion, or of aversion. The character of adversion secures the reproduction of the physical feeling, as one element in the objectification of the subject beyond itself. Such reproduction may be thwarted by incompatible objectifi- cation derived from other feelings. But a physical feel-~ ing, whose valuation produces adversion, is thereby an element with some force of persistence into the future beyond its own subject. It is felt and re-enacted down a route of occasions forming an enduring object. Finally this chain of transmission meets with incompatibilities, and is attenuated, or modified, or eliminated from further endurance.

When there is aversion, instead of adversion, the transcendent creativity assumes the character that it inhibits, or attenuates, the objectification of that subject in the guise of that feeling. Thus aversion tends to elimi- nate one possibility by which the subject may itself be objectified in the future. Thus adversions promote stability; and aversions promote change without any indication of the sort of change. In itself an aversion

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promotes the elimination of content, and the lapse into triviality.