TPF : Process Philosophy -- a metaphysics for our time

[Gnomon]

Whitehead was a logician and mathematician so he did not (to my knowledge) believe in ESP in the usual sense.

I assumed that he was not talking about magical Extrasensory Perception, but I'm still grasping at an understanding of "knowledge that is obtained by means 'outside' of sense perception"*1. Perhaps you can explain the distinction between "presentational" and "conceptual" immediacy, and what that has to do with obtaining knowledge. My post above replaced those terms with Perception (physical) and Conception (metaphysical). My guess is that the latter refers to Reasoning from received Information inputs to inferred Insights & Principles as Knowledge outputs. Does that sound like something Whitehead might mean?

*1. Whitehead :
"He suggested that human experience involves two distinct modes of direct perception of the external world: presentational immediacy and conceptual immediacy"
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... perception

There is nothing in Whitehead which is completely counter to modern science now or then. It is the reductionist, deterministic, mechanistic view of nature which Whitehead rejects.

That's why I mentioned "Holism" in my post above, which includes the Ideas & Ideals & Meanings (culture) that are omitted from the scientific Reductionist view of nature. It encompasses both innate Matter and emergent Mind in the process of Evolution. Holism is the Synthetic tendency in evolution*2. It's how old stuff is transformed into new stuff. And how living organisms emerge from non-living matter.

*2. Holism and Evolution :
Unfortunately, Holism is still controversial in Philosophy. That is primarily due to the practical and commercial success of reductive methods in the physical sciences. Methodological Reductionism attempts to understand a complex system by breaking it down into its component parts. And that approach works well for mechanical devices, but not so well for living things.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page33.html

[Gnomon]

Whitehead was a logician and mathematician so he did not (to my knowledge) believe in ESP in the usual sense.

In my previous post, I opined that Whitehead did not mean that Magical ESP could reveal information & knowledge via non-physical channels. But perhaps there is another option. I've seen him described as an Idealist*1, but not as a Mystic*2. Is it possible that Whitehead believed that it was possible to commune directly with God?

He doesn't seem to be the type to revel in ecstasies & altered states. I occasionally (rarely) learn some relevant information via easy Intuition instead of effortful Reason. But I don't think of it as Mystical enlightenment, rather as "pattern-matching, in which case the motivated brain accesses long-buried data in long-term memory.

Perhaps ANW thought that all things were connected back to God (occasion of creation) , but not necessarily directly.

*1. Idealism :
In the third argument, the idealist holds that in the individual’s most-immediate experience, that of his own subjective awareness, the intuitive self can achieve a direct apprehension of ultimate reality, which reveals it to be spiritual. Thus, the mystic bypasses normal cognition, feeling that, for metaphysical probings, the elaborate processes of mediation interposed between sense objects and their perceptions reduce its reliability as compared with the direct grasp of intuition.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/ideali ... -arguments

*2. ANW Mysticism? :
Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy, particularly his concept of "process philosophy," while not explicitly focused on mysticism, can be seen as having mystical implications, emphasizing the interconnectedness of all things and the importance of direct experience and intuition
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... d+mystical

[Gnomon]

In chapter 11 of the Annaka Harris audiobook Lights On, she has a conversation with Carlo Rovelli. Most of the conversation is about Rovelli's view that time is not fundamental, but is an emergent experience from the structure of the universe. Part of the conversation, though, touched on Rovelli's view of objects-as-processes.

I agree with Rovelli. Although we tend to think of Space-Time as essential to Nature, those categories seem to be inferred from human experience with Change & Extension, and then attributed to Nature as-if they are objective things. Nevertheless, the "illusion"*1 of a river of time serves a valid function for humans attempting to swim with or against the flow.

Since flowing time is not a material substance, Whitehead warned us not to confuse the Now of our conception with an atom of Time : a "durationless instant"*2. So, there are no Real increments of time, equivalent to seconds, yet we construct an Ideal model of space-time as-if made of malleable matter.

Similarly, all observed objects are dynamic processes, not static things. That fact became evident when quantum physicists discovered that sub-atomic particles are actually continuous waves in the flow of Time. Which is the process of world creation. And even observed processes are mental models (ideas) created by the brain to explain change in the world. So, all discontinuities are man-made. Hence, we don't cut Nature at its physical joints, we carve at the logical intersections of the structure of reality ; whatever that means.

I suppose that counter-intuitive fact of flow is the crux of his Idealistic worldview, which serves as a Critique of Materialism*3. And which makes it difficult for many thinkers on this forum, including me, to understand what he was talking about.


*1. Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli argues in his book, "The Order of Time," that our perception of time as a flowing, universal entity is an illusion, and that time may not exist in a fundamental way, but rather emerges from a complex network of events.
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... +not+exist

*2.Rejection of Instantaneous Time :
He argued that the concept of a durationless instant as an ultimate entity is problematic and leads to difficulties in understanding reality.
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... ad+on+time

*3. Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy, particularly his "Philosophy of Organism," is a critique of scientific materialism, arguing that reality is not simply a collection of independent material objects but a dynamic, interconnected web of processes and events, a view he articulated in works like "Process and Reality".
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... aterialism