Whitehead's Radically Different Postmodern Philosophy

David Ray Griffin

Description

Postmodern philosophy is often dismissed as unintelligible, self-contradictory, and as a passing fad with no contribution to make to the problems faced by philosophers in our time. While this characterization may be true of the type of philosophy labeled postmodern in the 1980s and 1990s, David Ray Griffin argues that Alfred North Whitehead had formulated a radically different type of postmodern philosophy to which these criticisms do not apply. Griffin shows the power of Whitehead's philosophy in dealing with a range of contemporary issues—the mind-body relation, ecological ethics, truth as correspondence, the relation of time in physics to the (irreversible) time of our lives, and the reality of moral norms. He also defends a distinctive dimension of Whitehead's postmodernism, his theism, against various criticisms, including the charge that it is incompatible with relativity theory.

Introduction
Abbreviations

PART 1. WHITEHEAD’S PHILOSOPHY AS POSTMODERN

1. Whitehead’s Philosophy as Postmodern Philosophy              

2. Whitehead’s Philosophy and the Enlightenment

PART 2. WHITEHEAD ON CONSCIOUSNESS, ECOLOGY, TRUTH, TIME, AND ETHICS

3. Consciousness as a Subjective Form: Interactionism without Dualism 

4. Whitehead’s Deeply Ecological Worldview: Egalitarianism without Irrelevance

5. Truth as Correspondence, Knowledge as Dialogical: Pluralism without Relativism

6. Time in Physics and the Time of Our Lives: Overcoming Misplaced Concreteness

7. Whitehead and the Crisis in Moral Theory: Theistic Ethics without Heteronomy

PART 3. THE COHERENCE OF WHITEHEADIAN THEISM

8. Relativity Physics and Whiteheadian Theism: Overcoming the Apparent Conflicts

9. Whiteheadian Theism: A Response to Robert Neville’s Critique

Appendix: Whitehead’s Subjectivist Principle: From Descartes to Panexperientialism                                                                          

Notes    
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791480304
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

WHITEHEAD’S RADICALLY D I F F E R E N T P O S T M O D E R N P H I L O S O P H Y AN ARGUMENT FOR ITS CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE

DAVID RAY GRIFFIN

Whitehead’s Radically Different Postmodern Philosophy

SUNY series in Philosophy George R. Lucas Jr., editor

Whitehead’s Radically Different Postmodern Philosophy

An Argument for Its Contemporary Relevance

David Ray Griffin



S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS

Cover photo: black and white photograph / portrait of Alfred North Whitehead courtesy of the Center for Process Studies, Claremont, CA.

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2007 State University of New York

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Griffin, David Ray, 1939– Whitehead’s radically different postmodern philosophy : an argument for its contemporary relevance / David Ray Griffin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978–0–7914–7049–7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Whitehead, Alfred North, 1861–1947. 2. Postmodernism. 3. Process philosophy. I. Title

B1674.W354G75 2007 192—dc22

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2006017525

I NTRODUCTION

A BBREVIATIONS

Contents

PART 1. WHITEHEAD’S PHILOSOPHY AS POSTMODERN

1. Whitehead’s Philosophy as Postmodern Philosophy

2. Whitehead’s Philosophy and the Enlightenment

PART 2. WHITEHEAD ON CONSCIOUSNESS, ECOLOGY, TRUTH, TIME, AND ETHICS

3. Consciousness as a Subjective Form: Interactionism without Dualism

4. Whitehead’s Deeply Ecological Worldview: Egalitarianism without Irrelevance

5. Truth as Correspondence, Knowledge as Dialogical: Pluralism without Relativism

6. Time in Physics and the Time of Our Lives: Overcoming Misplaced Concreteness

7. Whitehead and the Crisis in Moral Theory: Theistic Ethics without Heteronomy

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Whitehead’s Radically Different Postmodern Philosophy

PART 3. THE COHERENCE OF WHITEHEADIAN THEISM

8. Relativity Physics and Whiteheadian Theism: Overcoming the Apparent Conflicts

9. Whiteheadian Theism: A Response to Robert Neville’s Critique

A PPENDIX : Whitehead’s Subjectivist Principle: From Descartes to Panexperientialism

N OTES

B IBLIOGRAPHY

I NDEX

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Introduction

When thinkers started using the termpostmodernwith some regularity in the 1960s and 1970s, its meaning was such that its application to the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead was eminently appropriate. In those days, in fact, the idea of “postmodern thought” was associated with Whitehead more often than not. In later decades, however, this term came to be used with a radically differ- ent meaning, one that made Whiteheadian philosophy seem more an opponent than an exemplification of postmodernism. For example, in an essay entitled “Postmodernism” in theCambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Bernd Magnus, an expert on Nietzsche, says that postmodernism is characterized by three central concepts: ‘anti-realism,’ ‘opposition to transcendental arguments and transcen- dental standpoints,’ and ‘rejection of truth as correspondence to reality.’ Whitehead, far from exemplifying any of these positions, explicitly argues against them (although this is true in relation to the second one only under some of the possible meanings of the wordtranscendental). Many philosophers, accordingly, would find the use of the termpostmodernto characterize Whitehead’s philoso- phy misleading or even illegitimate. To draw that conclusion, however, is to commit the common fallacy of equating a genus with one of its species. This fallacy is, to be sure, quite com- monly committed. For example, evolutionism is widely equated with theneo- Darwiniantheory of evolution; theism is widely equated withtraditionaltheism; and mind-body interactionism is widely equated withdualisticinteractionism. The fact that the fallacy is widely committed does not, however, remove its falla- cious nature and its possible perniciousness. The equation of a genus with one of its species can be pernicious because if that species is widely regarded as deeply problematic, those problems will be used to reject the genus as such. Christian fundamentalists, for example, com- monly use problems in neo-Darwinism as a basis for arguing that evolutionism as such should be rejected; atheists use problems in traditional theism, such as its insoluble problem of evil, as a basis for rejecting theism of every type; and mate- rialist identists, who regard the mind as identical with the brain, use problems in

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dualistic interactionism as the basis for rejecting mind-brain interactionism alto- gether. These fallacious rejections are especially pernicious if it is the case, as I believe, that a true account of the nature of reality would involve a species of evolutionism, a species of theism, and a species of mind-brain interactionism. In a similar way, the fallacious equation of postmodernism as such with the species of postmodernism that became prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s has led many thinkers to argue, from the fact that that form of postmodernism is deeply problematic (being even self-stultifying), that postmodernism as such should be left behind. But that attitude, besides being fallacious, is also pernicious if it is the case, as I believe, that the best way to overcome the incoherence and irrele- vance of mainstream modern philosophies is by means of an approach that is most accurately termed “postmodern,” even though it disagrees radically with many of the central theses widely thought to be inextricably connected with that term. This radical disagreement about what kind of approach is most deserving of the term ‘postmodern’ is intimately related to the question of which dimensions of distinctivelymodernphilosophy need to be transcended. Whitehead had very definite ideas about this question and developed his philosophy as a solution to some very basic ontological and epistemological premises that are distinctive to the “modern worldview.” He believed there was no hope for significant progress in philosophy apart from a rejection of those premises. His philosophy is properly called “postmodern” insofar as it provides a reasoned critique of, and alternative to, those premises while retaining the clear advances associated with modernity (rather than returning to apremodern worldview). Besides being fallacious and pernicious, the contention that Whitehead’s philosophy cannot legitimately be called “postmodern” is possibly even self-con- tradictory. That is, this contention seems to entail the claim that Whitehead’s philosophy conflicts with the essence of postmodernism—even though one of the features of the kind of postmodernism in question is the rejection of essen- tialist thinking. Be that as it may, I believe that the characterization of Whitehead’s philos- ophy as postmodern helps bring out important dimensions of his philosophy that would otherwise be missed or at least underemphasized. I also suspect that Whitehead’s philosophy, in addition to being one species or version of postmod- ernism, is the superior species in the sense of best dealing with the commonly recognized problems created by distinctively modern philosophy. I will not, how- ever, engage in the kind of comparative analysis that such an argument will require. I will simply show that Whitehead’s philosophy can in fact deal with a wide range of those problems. I leave to others the issue of whether there is another kind of postmodernism that can do a better or at least comparable job. The first part of this book looks at Whitehead’s philosophy from this point of view. The use of ‘postmodern’ to describe Whitehead’s philosophy is explored

Introduction

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most fully in chapter 1. The second chapter looks at the closely related issue of the relation of Whitehead’s philosophy to the movement commonly known as “the enlightenment.” The second part of the book examines five issues that have been widely rec- ognized as deeply problematic for modern philosophy. The first four problems have resulted from one of the distinctive premises of modern thought, namely, the idea that the most elementary units of the world are what Whitehead calls “vacuous actualities”—meaning entities that are fully actual and yet wholly devoid of experience. These four problems are (1) the inability to explain (apart from the supernaturalism presupposed by Descartes) the existence of conscious experience and its capacity to interact with the physical world, including the brain; (2) the existence of an antiecological worldview, in which “nature” is regarded as devoid of intrinsic value; (3) the inability to articulate our presuppo- sition that truth means “correspondence”; and (4) the inability to reconcile time as we experience it with the only kind of time that can exist in the world studied by physicists, if that world is indeed comprised of vacuous actualities (as both dualists and materialists assume). I argue that Whitehead’s panexperientialism, arguably the most fundamental of his postmodern doctrines, provides the basis for solving all four of these problems. The fifth problem, the current crisis in moral theory, is shown to have resulted primarily from taking the modern insistence that ethics cannot be het- eronomous—that is, based on an appeal to authority—to entail that it must be independent of theism. I show that Whitehead’s philosophy, especially his ver- sion of theism, can, while fully rejecting all appeals to authority, overcome the central problems responsible for the current crisis in moral theory. In the third part of the book, I defend Whitehead’s version of theism, often called “panentheism,” which is another of his postmodern doctrines (being an alternative to the three modern possibilities of supernaturalistic theism, panthe- ism, and atheism). I defend this panentheism against two kinds of criticism. Chapter 8 argues that, contrary to widespread belief, special relativity physics creates no difficulties for Whitehead’s temporalistic theism or even the more fully temporalistic theism of Charles Hartshorne. Chapter 9 defends Whiteheadian theism against the “challenge to process theism” issued by Robert Neville, who has argued that Whitehead’s position could be made more ade- quate and coherent by replacing Whitehead’s doctrine of God with a radically different doctrine. The appendix examines in some detail Whitehead’s treatment of the major methodological move—the “subjectivist turn”—made by the archetypal modern philosopher, René Descartes. Whitehead argued that if Descartes, whose name is virtually synonymous with ontological dualism and its notorious mind-body problem, had carried his subjectivist turn to its logical conclusion, he would have been led to panexperientialism, in which this problem does not arise.