Another brief answer to parnenides-fag, this again from whitehead himself

Thank you, user. I understand the idea (The Parmenidean) One), and believe it has merit and practical application (especially in combating the hubristic Whiteadian school). However, neither do I accept the idea hook, line, and sinker, nor describe myself as a Parmenidean in the ideological sense.
>Can we ever explain why things need to be actualized or why things can just be?
Therein lies the elegance of the Parmenidean system; it simply does away with two-thirds of the equation.

of course you would respond only after i've abandoned my keyboard.
i'm going to pass over most of what you've written for now, but do not take that as a concession. instead, i ask: how does parmenides account for novelty without suurendering to the question-begging doctrine of 'illusion'? the same question applies to everything that parmenides denies.

and in answer more generally, whitehead contends that the only reality, that which isn't a becoming or a process, is what has already passed--is the past, is objecr
tive immortality, is settled fact. anything new, all that which 'is not', can only emerge out of that which 'is', or has been and continues to exert it's force through the prehension of of its data.
but as i said in a previous thread, this is really to conflate the categories of two basically incompatible metaphysical doctrines. neither can be held simultaneously. whitehead's process simply benefits from a much more elaborated system, greater internal coherence, and more complete assimilation of the greater parts of our experience.

are you guys actually saying anything? to me it sounds like gibberish. how do u become so smart? why can't i understand what ur discussin? are these philosophers just using big words to describe simple concepts?

we are mostly just bullshitting, don't feel bad if you can't follow.
whitehead's work is full of neologisms and unconventional usage, so a glance at discussion where it's employed will almost certainly be inpenetrable.
metaphysical discussion is by nature and necessity at the highest level of abstraction. it is relating the most elemental concepts to each other, or formulating new ones where they are needed. in this way it is a description of the simplest things. the strangeness is out of a need to distance ourselves from the most familiar, to see it anew.
if you want to into philosophy, read plato.

Provide to me a definition of novelty and I can answer your question in earnest. Perhaps, however, in a circuitous fashion, the following question will suffice to answer yours: How does Whiteahead account for everything he affirms without surrendering to the question-begging doctrine of 'experience'?
Implicit here is the presumption that thought (keep in mind the Parmenidean conceptualization of such) is the actualization of subjective desire; the superject is the actualization of the subject is the actualization of the superject is the actualization of the subject ad infinitum. Rather, there is only the subject, or only the superject - or better but more tentatively put - the instance that exists between the two (there is no name for what I describe, though I hesitantly call it as I have done before "actualize itself"); that is, the simultaneous collapse of totality in an atemporal 0-point.

Too bad heidegger is an actual philosopher and whitehead is a meme

nothing specialized in the meaning. 'the new;' 'newness;' 'variety' and so on.
unfortunately, experience is the basis and the sine qua non for justification, as far as whitehead is concerned. and for good reason; there can be exlerience without thought, but there cannot be thought without experience. and so we come quite quickly, again, to the mutual unintelligibility of these systems. discursive thought is not primary, but a highly sophisticated, abstract 'series' of occasions. feeling is primordial, and forms the background uppn which consciousness attends its objects.

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yeah, too bad. all that wasted paper.

>The taint of Aristotelian Logic has thrown the whole empahsis of metaphysical thought upon substantives and adjectives, to the neglect of prepositions and conjunctions.

would that mean
syntax>semantics
Am I getting it wrong?

the issue is not a verbal or semantic one, but a metaphysical one. the error in aristotelian logic is that it perpetuates a flawed metaphysical doctrine (substance), which is preserved in our language, unexamined.

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obviously none of this answers parmenides directly, but i think it's suggestive. at least of a greater complexity to reality and experience than parmenides allows.

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by emphasizing prepositions and conjunctions whitehead would redirect our attention from the 'unchanging, enduring essence' upon which predicates merely flicker over, to the individuality of actual occasions; the heccaeity of individuals as they endure through time; and the multiplicity of occasions as they resolve into the novelty of yet another actual occasion, whereby the many become one and are added by one.

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To me it just sounds like Whitehead is asking for a more mechanical-influenced metaphysics.
But you're making a bold statement about substance by way of Aristotle, user.
What are your feelings about Spinoza, if I may ask?

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>there can be experience without thought
Much like Whitehead, you've failed to consider the simultaneity of thought and being; something more primordial, more prior than feeling or experience itself. Reread my first comment. As an aside, posting page after page of dense philosophical material is not conducive with good conversation. May I suggest you synthesize your own thoughts from said material?

i would if i could, but i must type with my thumbs, which is not conducive to long-form.
in every actual occasion there is a mental pole and a physical pole which, to my ear, suggests a 'simulaneity' of thought and being.
as i said before, we keep coming up against this gap in our accepted, acceptable premises.
you never answered my question re: explaining the reality of novelty without recourse to the doctrine of illusion, even after i explained what was meant by novelty and answering your own reversal of my initial question. show me at least as micj respect as i am to you in answering more forthrightly, rather than endlessly turning the conversation back to ground on which you feel more secure.

whitehead utterly and completely rejects all substance metaphysics as incompatible with the findings of evolutiom, of relativity, electromagnetism, and of particle physics, and with more basic elements of our real experience. he wrote several books on this subject, so it's asking a lot to summarize his reasoning here.
whitehead's system is ultimately against mechanism even though he admits that the majority of nature proceeds more or less repetitively and without much novelty. even so, in all occasions there is a subjective gathering of the past into itself--that is, an activity, sui generis. nothing simply 'happens'; there is always a decision, even if it is merely to conform entirely to the suggestion of the past.

>in every actual occasion there is a mental pole and a physical pole which, to my ear, suggests a 'simulaneity' of thought and being
though, it should be said, that *discursive, conscious* thought--the kind parmemides takes as simultneous with being--is again a derivative or, more accurately, complex occasion 'emergent' from more basic occasions. and the only concept of 'being' that would be kind of compatible with parmenides and that whitehead could accept would, probably, refer to either the objective immortality of past occasions, or to the individuality of a certain patterned history of occasions, such as a personality. but i don't think that's what parmenides had in mind.
you've never been clear about what is meant by this, by the way, the 'simultaneity of thought and being'. it's obscure enough ad it is in the source material. enlighten us.

Whitehead appears to make the mistake of thinking that the failure of the surviving works of Plato to sufficiently illustrate his metaphysics can be taken as a satisfactory ground for concluding that the notion that it is the operation of the Psyche and Eros giving motion to the world which itself provides ground for concluding that actual reality is fundamentally a process, that because these factors condition/synthesize everything; that what we regard as reality or 'actual existence' is this perpetual activity or motion). That as he phrases it, actuality is a process involving the transforming of past into new, which ties into the Soul perpetually regarding new ideas and experiencing new things via a synthesis where the appearance of the past combines with mental/intuitive anticipation and new post-past appearances; and that the combination of these condition the immediate future moments with it's respective thoughts and experience of sensory data that one is thrust into.

Parmenides' ideas and there illustration by Parmenides-fag are quite correct in pointing out that the hole in this view is that it misses the forest through the trees of its enumeration-the unchanging atemporal 'now' in which all this is united. The line of thinking elaborated by Whitehead here was also already decisively refuted by Advaita Vedānta in the 8th century, which closely agrees with Parmenides on many levels. In his arguments with the other darśanas and nāstika schools Śaṅkarācārya points out that everything that one experiences in life internally and externally, all emotions, all sensory data, and all the workings of the mental faculty are all fundamentally observed by and through the same unchanging locus of awareness, ātma. By default, any time one consciously experiences anything at all whether a sight or thought in all cases one 'is aware' of it. It is ONLY through this capacity of 'being aware' through which ostensible change in the world or in one's own thoughts can be registered, but this is not a process or a succession of 'awarenesses' of thoughts or distinct events/data; but rather that irrespective of any other consideration- all of existence is only experienced through this always present prism of awareness which of necessity must be present for something to be experienced at all. Things like thoughts are not experienced by 'being' them, but any time awareness is conscious of anything whatsoever it inevitably differentiates that same awareness as being separate from that thing being observed as the witness of it. At all moments and in all states of mind, this innate capacity of awareness is fundamentally the same regardless of any conditioning affecting the mind such as drugs, head-injury, and so on (the mind and its activities are separate from and are observed by this atemporal awareness). Any perceived change in awareness in the waking state is just attributing to awareness qualities of the things being observed.

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"But what of when one is unconscious or asleep, I'm not aware then?" one might ask; in actuality this ever-present and unchanging prism of awareness remains even then and indeed never actually goes anywhere or does anything. The reason one does not consciously experience anything in deep-sleep (dreams having awareness of content) is that there is not the normal observing of the mind which produces these impressions for awareness to observe, in the absence of this awareness simply abides in itself without any subject-object distinction. The mind and it's capacity of memory (separate from and observed by awareness) are what register experiences and present them for recollection, the inactivity of the mind in this state and thus the inability to form memories of it is why one's mind cannot remember what it is like when one awakes. The presence of awareness even then can be inferred from it being present before anything else as soon as one exists deep sleep and a duality is created by the mind for it to observe; and also from that even in deep sleep being struck by someone will instantly intrude upon the awareness in its normal abiding.

That one could clearly point out an immediate, unchanging and ever-present continuum of being is itself an indictment of the Whiteheadian project. Advaita goes even further and offers various ontological arguments to show why this ātma is the sole reality. This Awareness is fundamentally the only thing that we can be sure really exists, without it there wouldn't be the apparent experience of anything, it is the doorway through which all sense of change and 'other' is witnessed. To deny awareness itself though is manifestly absurd and invalidates the person making the argument. When we come to the stage of ascertaining the reality or unreality of change and process however, it inevitably becomes "where does the experience of it (real or not) come from, how did it arise?". Assuming change is real presumes a source which leads to an infinite regress which only ends either with the source of that change spontaneously arising out of absolute nothingness (completely absurd), or from it coming from an already existent eternal thing. But if the eternal was subject to change (which is inevitably involved in any scenario of it causing temporary changes) than it wouldn't really be eternal to begin with and so this alternative is absurd as well. Asserting change as real leaves one in the unenviable place of being unable to come up with any satisfactory or logical explanation of how and why it exists and how it could arise. The only thing one can be sure of in the end is the unchanging continuum of the forever-now of awareness. As Śaṅkarācārya and even Buddhist philosophers who would disagree with him like Nāgārjuna both conclude, 'that which does not exist in the beginning and in the end does not really exist in the middle'.

weird to call it a 'syntax', when i think what he means is just a regulative principle that supervenes on reality e.g. 'change is impossible/unnecessary', which is not obvious from 'within' a universe.
the rule 'no change' is presupposed im the hypothesis of a static universe. it's petitio principe
a homogenous, self-sufficient universe cannot be bound by any heterogenous/exogneous rule *by definiton*, so why should we assume 'it' be bound by anything? or, at least, it remains to be demonstrates why the self-sufficient universe takes as its principle non-change, and how it is able to 'generate' such a principle without at the 'sane time' vioating it, which is kinda what i was after here

this thread is unironically the gathering ground of the bigbrains...one day i'll be able to discuss metaphysics with you guys...until then i'll just admire in awe at all these conversations of yours which i have no comprehension of whatsoever...

interesting posts, intial reaction:
the 'sameness' of ātman or that unchanging perspective by which all experience is possible is merely asserted as fact, even if 'revealed' through meditative insight. it is basically in alignment with the sensationalist doctrine that whitehead criticizes for its neglect of experiences more primordial than sense-peception, and for its (not his phrasing) anthropocentrism. there is a further presupposition of continuity that whitehead was likewise guilty of in his earlier writings, but was forced to correct to save his doctrine from zeno's paradoxes.

Novelty is the apperception of the aforementioned collapse, but the falling away of it before it is grasped. With that said, novelty is only novel in that the simultaneity is novelty itself. The novelty between the instances is non-existent, for there is no second instance from which space, and inter-thought novelty can form.

this juat sounds like an appeal to the illusory nature of reality as experienced.
what is meant by the simultaneity of being and thought? how does it stand up to the charge that neither being nor thought is primary without simple reassertion of both as given fact? how is such an assertion different and more secure than whitehead's insistence on experience as the basis of reality (thougj not necessarily conscious), and so its ultimate juatification?

a further, sketchy thought before bed:
the awareness that is ātman only seems possible by virtue of change, the experience of that change. for if there was no change there would be nothing to experience, no differentiation between content, merely identity (simultaneity?) of thought and being, which might as well be nothing. so it seems unwarrantable to move from the (as i still see it, merely assumed) 'atemporal', permanently present and unaltered awareness to the assertion that such awareness is the only thing that exists, as that awareness, even as awareness of itself *as* wareness, is only aware through something heterogenous with it. for the awareness as awareness is a kind of second-order awareness, like seeing yourself reflected in a mirror, reflected in another mirror. you are asserting the existence of the mirror as 'ultimate', whereas the mirror only functions as a mirror when there is something to behold in it.

The simultaneity of being and thought is THE experience. An experience more primordial than that Whitehead speaks of. An experience without consciousness is possible, but not one without thought.

>like seeing *yourself* reflected in a mirror
Imagine the hall of mirrors you've described. Now imagine it without what you designate as *yourself*. The subject in your hall of mirrors is the realtionship between the mirrors and it's reflections. Now extrapolate the metaphor.

bump for when i can actually read through all this sub par philosophical drivel in 1 hour

I have no idea about Whitehead because I am not convinced enough to buy into this new Yea Forums meme jsut yet, but to the Parmenidesfag:
First off, I haven't read the platonic dialogue (yet), since there is no real point in reading that to learn what Parmenides teaches ,since it is jsut a strawman interpretation meant to help further solidify Platon's idea world conept, but I have read the original Poem, and a couple secondary literature, specific to Parmenides or at least where Parmenides was discussed in works that generally deal with the rpe Socratic 'Philosophy'.
It is essential to me, for when trying to understand the poem itself that one has to be aware of the multiple different uses of "estin" (is) with a subject in for example "that is" (hopôs estin) and "that not is" (hopôs ouk estin), such that - I'm having to translate from german - (1) "... is" can either be attributed to a context or an obvious Subject, (2) the subject is general or undefined, (3) the subject is not encessary, the "is" or "is not" is complete in itself. The last one (3) can be compared to "hyei - it rains" where no subject is encessary in ancient greek.
From this there are also the different usage of "estin" as a copula for predicates exists in comparison to the existential "estin" from which the different usages in the poem itself can be taken from, so that it is more than likely that Parmenides doesn't use the same "estin" each time, alrgely attributed to the ancient greek language where it simply is not (easily) differentiable. So there exist different interpretations, either the "existential", the "predicative", the "mix-up"(wrong understanding of which is), the "veritative" (predicative can always be seen as existential), the "fusion" (existential and predicative not clearly seperated) theses for the "is".
This should allow us to not have to choose between either the existential Being or a descriptive interpretation of Being, both are not consistent with respective parts of the poem, but rather allow us to choose the proper "is" where applicable. IMO this should give way to the noumena (noumenon) and phenomena understanding of Being.
One which the goddess Dike says is the true Being, the noumenon, and the other the human faulty pehomenal Being (the true path vs the wrong path). By this you can still accept the parts in the poem where we can only speak or think what truly IS while saying that the differentiation between the subjects are only fleshly differentiable but actually only part of the true Bing that is whole, one, homogenous, continuous, inseperable, never changing, immovable, and comparable (figuratively) to a ball (the phenomenoloigcal "is" being built on the true "is").
Doing this we allow the ideas of change, time, the aristotle accident - Akzidens (english is retarded), speaking, thinking, etc. while realizing they are not true being but rather the (aristotele's) Substance as the one true path of Being.

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Perhaps add as well, that Parmenides didn't jsut have to use a language that has much ambiguity but also "not existance" as describable in the language, which obviously goes against the very idea of the poem. Also perhaps it is similar to L.W. ladder where once we have realized or understood "not being" as impossible we will reject the poem for the usage of not being, as it is limited to our language.

>aristotele's akzident or substanz are only meant as a easier vunderstanding but not actually how aristoteles would use it.

>this is really to conflate the categories of two basically incompatible metaphysical doctrines.
this, perhaps.

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but that isn't an experience in any meaningful sense, because there's nothing *'happening'* 'to experience'. the datum is identical with itself. 'simulataneity is here acting in two senses; one, to imply an identity between thought and being; and two, much more alippery, to invoke a framework of temporality 'in which' these two concepts can 'be' simultaneous, while still allowing one two seny that same temporal 'syntax'.
don't argue to the metaphor. the 'self' in this is just a stand-in for any experience whatsoever. without the experience, there's nothing to 'reflect' in the mirror. and, of course, even describing ātman as a mirror is to concede more than intended, as a mirror is a 'thing' thay persists in spite of the images that pass over its surface, whereas my point is that without these images, the mirror does not exist.

the harder an idea is to explain, the less likely it is to be true

good post, thank you for joining. it's frustrating trying to discuss greek philosophy without actually having anybgreek, as i think much of the meaning is carried in the words themselves, which seem semantically 'overdetermined'
from what you've written here, i believe my original suspicion was correct, that the argument proceeds from an ambuguity in the meaning of 'being', moving as needed between verb, substantive, etc, i.e. by an equivocation.
oh well.

a little more from whitehead. the similarity between the sensationalist and the buddhist doctrines i think is in the privileging of the foreground, the 'clear and distinct' appearances that have been selected for attention by consciousness/awareness. what whitehead would have you notice is the background which makes this foregrounding possible. it is as much 'in' experience as the foreground, but 'below' or 'behind' conscious attention. it is taken for granted by the sensationalist, while the foreground of sense-perception, already in an important sense an abstraction, is abstracted even further and taken to be the only 'real' component of experience.
beyond this, both the buddhist and the parmenidean are stuck at this level of conscious attention or awareness, which is for whitehead only a very specialized form of experience--and is, indeed, the very source of this troublesome disjunction between appearance and reality. but experience, non-conscious mentality, is 'present' at every level of 'reality', in every actual occasion. non-conscious occasions, indeed, make up the bulk of all actuality.

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>the 'sameness' of ātman or that unchanging perspective by which all experience is possible is merely asserted as fact,
Wrong, it is irrefutable both that anything consciously experienced is done so through awareness, and that regardless of whatever type of experience or sensation this allows for the witnessing of, that one is equally aware of them all in the same way. There are not different levels or types of awareness or different competing awarenesses in the same selfhood, but there are only the two options of being aware of something and not having any awareness of it, in which case it's not experienced to begin with. No matter what, this basic capacity of awareness remains the same throughout in all experience, there aren't any examples one can point to which would demonstrate otherwise.
Anything consciously experienced which could be used as a hypothetical rebuttal is by necessity itself observed and experienced through awareness, any alleged qualitative changes/differences in one's awareness which could be used as hypothetical arguments against ātma's unchanging nature are themselves rendered inadmissible by the fact that in order to delimit and examine these qualities (such if one claimed awareness functions differently when one is sleep-deprived or on drugs) they have to be noticed and observed by awareness itself in the first place, establishing themselves as something separate from that awareness as the object of its attention that it witnesses; that one is able to observe these qualities in the mind in a subject-objection distinction means they are separate from the act or 'being' of witnessing them itself; which means any hypothetical example inevitably fails to prove a change in ātma, in the absence of any way to prove a change it's logical to accept its immutability as fact.
>in alignment with the sensationalist doctrine that whitehead criticizes for its neglect of experiences more primordial than sense-perception,
Nothing is more primordial than the capacity and act of pure awareness itself because it is the fundamental basis on which everything else rests. Try as hard as you can to come up with some sort of experience more primordial and no matter what that example is only known through and observed by the same awareness which was always there and which preceded it as the necessary condition of that example constituting a form of experience to begin with.

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>a further, sketchy thought before bed: the awareness that is ātman only seems possible by virtue of change, the experience of that change.
Ātma is not possible only because of change, it's the other way around. It can subsist in itself without any object of attention and one can verify this personally when in a deep enough state of meditation which some groups refer to as samādhi, if one goes deep enough into it and is able to reach a state of mental quiescence; all trace of thoughts and sensory input disappear, there is no subject-objection distinction and no detection of any change until one exits this state, but throughout all this one still abides as pure awareness.. This is almost the same as in deep sleep but in deep sleep the mind (or the 'subtle body') is totally inactive and the temporary vanishing of dualism is complete which means one cannot remember it upon waking. Mokṣa is similar to but still different from these two states (being distinguished from the darkness of deep sleep by the light of awareness of truth-reality, which is really freedom from the seed of ignorance still contained in deep sleep and other states; and is distinguished from samādhi by the liberation being effortless, unceasing and of the nature of unalloyed bliss).
>for if there was no change there would be nothing to experience, no differentiation between content, merely identity (simultaneity?) of thought and being, which might as well be nothing.
Advaita Vedānta holds that from the view of absolute reality nothing ever happens and there is no change whatsoever. The false sense of there being change is itself an unreal self-contained illusion which vanishes into nothing and is revealed as never having existed to begin with once one is completely freed from ignorance. Nirguna Brahman (the attributeless Supreme Being) is considered by Advaita to be the absolute reality (within which the illusory universe(s) seem to take place) of infinite and eternal ātma completely motionless, changeless and at rest, eternally-contented, forever without need or inclination; forever abiding as pure bliss without any object of awareness; it being the destiny of all creatures eventually over untold aeons to become freed from ignorance and to realize and return to the reality of this.

There is no simultaneity of thoughts here because there is not even mind, mind and thoughts belonging to the unreal realm of manifestation, neither is it nothing because it exists as non-nothing simply by being blissful awareness; even preceding the duality of existence and non-existence. The question of why there is the experience of subjective individuality and the perception of change to begin with is really the question of the reason for the descent of the soul. No school of thought provides an irrefutable explanation for this, Advaita considers it to be beginningless along with Brahman, but they did not feel the need to logically establish the reason for this because they were primarily concerned with ascertaining the truth of reality (and by extension proper scriptural exegesis) and the means for liberation, and not with creating a system for the sake of completely satisfying logicians. There are answers from other schools can be seen as aligning with Advaita on this question though, such as Sufism and Neoplatonism tells us that it stems from the overflowing of the fullness of Gods existence. Everything Advaita teaches remains coherent and internally consistent without an explanation for the descent of the soul though because Advaita accepts it as never actually happening to begin with (via Ajātivāda).

>so it seems unwarrantable to move from the 'atemporal', permanently present and unaltered awareness to the assertion that such awareness is the only thing that exists
The warranting of this atemporal ever-present awareness comes from the fact that one cannot deny that everything one experiences takes place through awareness, which is itself demonstrably an unchanging continuum as evinced by that any search for evidence of change or any labeling of a quality/object as change is witnessed by the same attributeless awareness throughout which inevitably remains separate from whatever quality or change one may wish to assign to it, as it precedes them and abides separately from them as their observer. The idea that this awareness is the only and supreme reality Advaita primarily takes on scriptural grounds, but they back this up with logical arguments one can reach without scripture, as I mentioned in the earlier posts; namely that the only thing which one can truly be sure of regardless of the (un)reality of anything else is that one is simply aware of being, and that to assign any reality to change and phenomena involves inherent contradictions because there can be no explanation for how that originated without leaving one in untenable paradoxes. When one recognizes the unfeasibility both of change/phenomena originating from nothing or from an already existing eternal thing it leaves one in a position where if you accept or believe that there is anything existing whatsoever then in order to avoid the contradictions inherent in origination this existent thing has to in reality only be one eternal and beginningless unchanging thing. Pure awareness is the only thing within the grasp of our immediate experience as existent and unchanging which fits this proposal; it's logical for other reasons as well such that if there is fundamentally only one thing existing; any conscious awareness self-evidently existent as presence/being necessarily must be inseparable from it. This isn't something Advaita thinkers wrote about but it also provides a satisfactory explanation for the hard problem of consciousness as well.

>that awareness, even as awareness of itself *as* wareness, is only aware through something heterogenous with it.
>whereas the mirror only functions as a mirror when there is something to behold in it.
>you are asserting the existence of the mirror as 'ultimate',
If you are trying to say what I think you are then that's false, what you are really speaking of here is that the concept of awareness as such is only able to be cognizable through the mind in a subject-object distinction (and for this cognitive act to be observed and registered by awareness) within something heterogenous with it (the mind). Consciousness is the inherent quality of awareness and it needs no other awareness to illumine itself, just as a lamp shines outwards with its own light without needing to be illumined by another lamp. Another analogous metaphor to awareness is the sun inhering in itself shining outward with its own light illumining everything equally, but the existence of the sun not being dependent upon those things illumined by it. I am saying the light (awareness) is the ultimate and not the mirror reflecting it (the mind and the universe presented to the mind through sensory experience). The idea that awareness needs anything else to be aware (not just of content/object but to just shine with awareness before knowledge of anything) is self-evidently wrong and is incompatible with the continuum of presence one experiences in life where it is always 'now', if awareness were not independent but depended on the heterogeneous than there would not be the continuum one experiences but there would be abrupt stops and gaps in conscious presence while one is awake as the subject of awareness changes because there wouldn't be any independent awareness linking the two, but this is never experienced. Also, as the subject of awareness changes qualitatively/quantitatively it should lead to there being the same changes in the awareness, but this is also never experienced and rather the capacity for and the act of awareness of interior and exterior phenomena always presents itself in the same way.

>weird to call it a 'syntax'
Oh he calls it syntax because he is modelling the universe partially a generative grammar. He establishes pretty early on that reality *is* a language, i.e. language itself is the most general description of any reality. His esoteric jargon with 'syntax' makes sense.

>a regulative principle that supervenes on reality e.g. 'change is impossible/unnecessary'
I think so but not quite. In his cosmology, it all goes back to Unbound Telesis. It is basically a realm where there is no information but just raw potential. From which, the universe must *select* itself. It is unclear though why it must select itself, or exactly what that means.

>which is not obvious from 'within' a universe.
the rule 'no change' is presupposed im the hypothesis of a static universe. it's petitio principe
This is a good point though, ty user.

Taking influence from Science of Logic I assume? Sorry, I am a metaphysics newb and I basically started with Langan (not a good idea).

to buddhabro: i thank you for your thoughtful responses, and am sorry to say that i cannot respond in a manner matching their thoroughness or eloquence. i am hamstrung by the format, which has me tapping away inaccurately at a sheer surface that yields poor imitations of my intended thoughts, and with ever present the hazard of a misplaced thumb and so the erasure of all my efforts.
i do not admit to any failing on the part of whitehead's system. the internal consistency of the advaita doctrine is evident, at least in its own terms, though i believe many of its central concepts and their various application to the matter to be either incomplete or exhibiting what whitehead calls the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. regardless, as i have stated at other points in this thread, we are at the point where, unable to admit of certain key premises of the other, we simply cannot argue cogently with one another.

i haven't read langan or antything from the datalogic guy(s?), so i don't think i can help you with your questions, but i will say that the best way to learn how to swim is often to just throw yourself into the ocean. you seem capable. just keep reading.

if i coule point out just one thing, though, it is the presupposition of the atemporality of awareness, even if this same 'attribute' (of the essentially attribute-less??) is a 'discovery' of reflection. for must not even this self-discovery take place 'in time', through a duration, a series of moments of the awareness-ing? as in 'bare' awareness *to* the awareness of awareness *to* the awareness of awareness as awareness and so on (ad infinitum? is there not a regress here as well?). each, again, another moment in the (oh god) process of becoming aware as awareness.

I already posted itt, but can I get just a quick rundown on why Whitehead is interesting?
I know nothing of the guy but to previously ignore these new Yea Forums meme threads.

if the material that has been presented here isn't enough to pique you, i don't know what could be further said that would.

and so, see, what i meant was that this second order awareness *of* awareness can only be an awareness of an awareness of some heterogeneous object, otherwise there is no awareness to be aware of. awareness cannot discover itself aware of nothing; it lacks a proper ground. this is that fallacy of misplaced concreteness, taking an abstract construction (awareness of awareness), which is a *derivative component* of a more concrete experience as the 'deeper' or 'more real' reality that os 'most concrete' or ultimate reality. same with substance, etc.

Whitehead-fag; has Whitehead solved it? Is his process philosophy the be-all-and-end-all? You speak of it as if it is

Something that I do (when on a pc) is typing in a word document and copying and pasting to avoid the limitations of the reply box. On a phone you can also do that with the notes app but it's a little more difficult. I'm happy to agree to disagree, I'm also to be clear despite my earlier Yea Forums-argument rhetoric not saying that Whitehead is 100% wrong but that it's just not a complete model from the view of Advaita (which I generally agree with but am not bitterly partisan about). I also don't believe that Advaita is completely proven by logic in every regard but admit that some of its claims can neither be proven nor disproven, traditionally in India most Advaitic teachings would only be taught in depth to someone who had already accepted the infallibility of the Upanishads anyway. In a certain sense Advaita accepts a conditional level of process philosophy insofar it rejects change and causality at the level of absolute reality but holds that causality applies to things belonging to and within the illusion; that ignorance begets continued false existence and repeated births in a cycle and that these false universes manifest and dissolve cyclically, and that the seed/momentum of the previous one gives rise to the new one in an eternal process. I wasn't the one who posted pic related but I saw another user post it in another thread about how Whitehead and Parmenides can be reconciled; and what they said also sort of illustrates where Advaita and Whitehead partially agree.

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if it comes off that way it's only because i've been reading so much of him and am excited by these new and strange ideas
i don't think it is the ultimate expression of anything, but it is the most coherent and comprehensive metaphysical system i have yet encountered
and by whitehead's own definition of metaphysics, his system can be nothing more than the collation of the most general concepts that are suggested or implied by *all* the modes/aspects of our experience, those most intimate as well as, more generally, the discoveries of science, of art, and theology. it is not revelation, but construction, never complete and always open to revision.

>it is not revelation, but construction, never complete and always open to revision.
Well, not really. It's only open to revision within the paradigm; not to the paradigm itself. It is in this manner that his system is just as absolutist as any other.

i too see large areas of overlap between the two systems, even if there can never be, just because of direct contradiction of certain critical concepts, total agreement. i am ignorant of most of the buddhist tradition (and much else besides), so i am certain i am misapprehending or at least failong to appreciate the subtleties of thought behind the admirable but necessarily brief presentation you've given here.
i want to thank you again for the stimulating posts. you've given me much to think about, and pointed the way toward new avenues of discovery.
and yes, i would agree, and so i think would whitehead. he is consciously and unapologetically constructing a 'western' metaphysics to meet with the traditional (and newer) concerns of 'western' thought and civilization.

>atemporality of awareness, even if this same 'attribute' (of the essentially attribute-less??)
Atemporality and immutability are not necessarily attributes, because if X was temporal it would be subject to change which itself would constitute an attribute in terms of how it responds to change, the changes effaced in it by its existence in time and so on, to say that something is attributeless sort of includes being beyond time and causation because the alternative would lead it to have attributes which is a non-starter. There is nothing actually attributeless in the phenomenal world we can point to but it only has relevance as an adjective used to describe abstract concepts.
>is a 'discovery' of reflection. for must not even this self-discovery take place 'in time', through a duration, a series of moments of the awareness-ing? as in 'bare' awareness *to* the awareness of awareness *to* the awareness of awareness as awareness and so on (ad infinitum? is there not a regress here as well?).
The discovery or recognition of the ātma as such does not lead to a problematic regress because it is simply the removal of wrong views about the nature of an already existent thing that is inseparable from one's immediate experience; when ignorance is fully destroyed the truth is considered to shine forth of its own accord without relying on any thought or meditative state to mediate it being known to awareness. Many Advaita texts actually talk about transcending thoughts of non-dualism itself because this still constitutes a subject-object distinction and the only way to be truly free of it is to abide in pure awareness without mental cogitation. Once you reach a high/final level you are considered to be still able to have thoughts and conversations in a way that doesn't interrupt non-duality through observing the activity of the mind as a totally unconcerned and unaffected spectator letting the mind play itself out.

The discovery of the truth is not considered to take place in time with an increasingly meta series of awarenesses but rather everything before final liberation is just considered as getting close to it by cognizing the truth with a pure mind, or of temporarily attaining it through deep introspection/meditation; the nature of final liberation and the status of jivanmukti that it confers are separate from these because it eliminates all meta X of X of X etc when it becomes an immediate truth directly experienced at every moment which becomes the forever 'now'; they explicitly say that there is no difference in ātma before and after liberation; it is realized as having always been present but one is just no longer occupied with the non-ātma. There would be no awareness of awareness because liberation entails freedom from being affected or distracted by something other than the pure awareness of the moment, the base awareness itself is sufficient to be consciously experienced without the need of reflection to realize it.

>Although essentially processive and devoid of any permanent order, the ceaseless becoming of the cosmos is nevertheless characterized by an overarching balance, rhythm, and regularity: one provided by and constituted by teotl... Dialectical polar monism holds that: (1) the cosmos and its contents are substantively and formally identical with teotl; and (2) teotl presents itself primarily as the ceaseless, cyclical oscillation of polar yet complementary opposites.

>Teotl's process presents itself in multiple aspects, preeminent among which is duality. This duality takes the form of the endless opposition of contrary yet mutually interdependent and mutually complementary polarities that divide, alternately dominate, and explain the diversity, movement, and momentary arrangement of the universe. These include: being and not-being, order and disorder, life and death, light and darkness, masculine and feminine, dry and wet, hot and cold, and active and passive. Life and death, for example, are mutually arising, interdependent, and complementary aspects of one and the same process.

What would Professor Pimple think of this?

i have read a bit of maffie's book. it's a compelling vision of reality, with an enchanting aesthetic, and is of definite historical interest; but i don't think it is comprehensive enough as-is to function in the capacity whitehead believes metaphysics should.
i see definite resonances between the concept of 'duality' in the aztec system, and in the notion of 'contrast' in whitehead's, and teotl clearly had some analogy with whitehead's god.

I saw an old post in the archive comparing Process and Reality to Berserk where Whitehead is analogous to Griffith and the reader to Guts

Can someone explain what this is supposed to mean

Because direct experience is sense perception which is change or not being

Humans by nature can only prove they are definitely rational and anything rational leads to enlightenment.

i don't understand.
thanks for clarifying. this makes sense to me.

moreover, i just find whitehead's writing possessed of an immense poetic force. he is often referred to as dry and even tedious--and this is maybe true of his more technical passages. but elsewhere his expression is striking in its clarity, his sentences perfectly balanced, all impressing one with a vision of a great and terrible beauty.

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I can explain the descent of the soul. Emptiness is without limitation, as in it is dependent solely upon itself and is therefore not beholden to anything other than itself. It is pure existence without any limit or quality beyond itself. This means the essence of reality is absolute freedom, nothing constrains it nor necessitates it beyond itself. The finite is an emanation of this pure emptiness. Its lack of any determinant outside of itself means God is free to empty the finite from the infinite potentiality contained within it. It is free to self limit within its own confines. All form, quality, and emotion foam into being. The living mosaic of the world bellows forth. The vessel is broken and a living light shines through its cracks. God didn't have to make us, but he did. Here we stand amidst the vortex of beauty and terror of ultimate creativity wondering what the meaning of this supernal act may be.

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