/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14087584]

Why is Process Philosophy so based?

It's the only way to save Western philosophy from rank cartesianism

[Anonymous No.14087621]

>>14087584
Stop shilling meme man over and over and over on this site.

[Anonymous No.14087978]

was looking a bit into this guy's ideas and he does seem fairly based. feel like I'll get utterly btfo if I dive right into process and reality, though. what sort of prereqs does this book demand?

[Anonymous No.14087981]

>>14087584
Say what you like about him or else you haven’t read him and can fuck off.

[Anonymous No.14088016]

>>14087978
I just ordered Process and Reality and I'm really excited. I started with Modes of Thought. "Nature Lifeless" and "Nature Alive" are pretty great chapters. Sort of an outline of the nihilism of mechanistic natural philosophy/physics (reminds me of Schelling's Nature of Philosophy - which I might be a good read too). Then nature alive is Whiteheads take on returning to a "romantic" view of the nature and life.

Tragic Beauty in Whitehead and Japanese Aesthetics is also pretty based. It's helping me get in the mindset of process philosophy, which I guess is the hardest part for me. Switching from substance based philosophy to the idea of process and "actual occasions" being the "atoms" of reality is hard to grasp at times.

Apparently, Science and the Modern World is a good read too.

>>14087981
chill out, it's 4chan dude. Don't take it so seriously.

[Anonymous No.14088040]

>>14088016
This Odin book looks cool, I remember doing a paper about how Japanese aesthetics focuses on process rather than form. Thanks anon

[Anonymous No.14088046]

>>14088040
oh, Wordsworth's nature poems are also recommended

[Anonymous No.14088102]

>>14087584
Whitehead is an interesting character, but not much more than that; a philosophical curiosity if you will. It's almost universally attested that he was retroactively refuted by Parmenides (perhaps an explanation as to why he isn't taken seriously outside of the new-age community these days). The man simply couldn't contend with the Eleatic observation of the simultaneity of thought and being. In light of this observation the infinite procession of "actual occasions" that characterizes Whiteaheadian reality collapses in on itself, forming an evenementiel zero-point; an eternal, unchanging now-ness. A shame really, the man had potential.

[Anonymous No.14088118]

I have been arguing with my friend about process philosophy lately. He is very sympathetic to it because he wants a return of authentic speculative metaphysics (not "speculative turn" bullshit, simply real metaphysics). I am extremely sympathetic to this as well, and I am very influenced by Naturphilosophie and Platonism, but we still argue about two basic points:
1) what epistemological ground Whitehead is standing on when he makes very strong metaphysical claims about the real world; specifically, how he overcomes the standard problems that a sceptic would pose to him
2) even assuming he has decent epistemological grounds for his claims, what exactly these claims are; and related to this, how they've been interpreted by his successors.

I am very familiar with pragmatist epistemology and "asymptotic" idealist theories of truth, so I had no problems with the prefatory chapter on method. But I still don't see how it avoids the standard critiques of "asymptotic adequacy" as a criterion of truth, namely that they lead to a bad infinity. Infinitesimally more "adequate" knowledge, especially if knowledge is defined somehow through prediction and experiment in a Jamesian way, still doesn't answer the question of how this can ever be CERTAIN knowledge, let alone complete knowledge. Even if you say there is no complete or certain knowledge, because the nature of nature itself is incompleteness, which I understand is a Whiteheadian thing, you are begging the question, because you've just said in the form of logical certainty and apodictic necessity that nature has no certain and apodictic essence. Even if nature "in itself" is uncertain and open-ended, you still have to justify YOUR certain knowledge OF this proposition.

For a while I thought he hadn't read Kant, but he mentions Kant and seems to know him well. Yet I still don't see how he gets over the essential problem, merely formalized by Kant, of how synthetic a priori judgments, that is metaphysical judgements of necessary character about reality as it is in itself, can ever be made. I just mentioned the problem of finality and certainty in judgment, but the same problem arises in an even simpler form when Whitehead refers to an (at least relatively) stable "God" of some kind as the guarantor of certain things in the system of reality. This is a classic scholastic and idealist move, making God the "uber-observer" of reality, to avoid the problem of reality's self-subsistence in the absence of a mind observing it. But this is a synthetic a priori judgment, i.e., rationalistic. How one can know that nature/God IS a unity, inductively and empirically, if such unity is required for the system to hang together in the first place?

[Anonymous No.14088124]

>>14088118
At one point Whitehead even gives it a form similar to Kant's regulative unity of nature (pic related for a description). But this means, at least as far as I understand it, that Whitehead is justifying his empiricist epistemology with an a priori metaphysics, and then "confirming" the same a priori metaphysics "empirically," within the rules he just established for it epistemologically. This is obviously begging the question. Kant's account is no less problematic for many reasons of its own, but at least he fairly consistently adopts a sceptical position -- synthetic a priori judgments are only ever regulative, and knowledge is asymptotic at best. We will never know the thing in itself. We can't "leapfrog" from the regulative to the constitutive and then back again. One or the other has to come first. That's Kant, anyway. It seems to me that Whitehead is trying to leapfrog. I don't want Kant's "solution," but nor can I accept Whitehead's.

This is where my friend and I have been arguing. At first I was just frustrated, because I couldn't find a point of epistemological ingress into Whitehead's system, which obviously massively reduces its appeal. No matter how interesting it is as a cosmology, if it can't justify itself as first philosophy, what's the point? He would become no more or less preferable to a mainstream physicist with a Quinean naturalist epistemology and a boring quantum cosmology. My friend has successfully convinced me that there is more to Whitehead, and I do agree with him that even a "leapfrogging" epistemology might involve some valuable esoteric element that doesn't fit the conventional schemes, but still: I don't see how Whitehead goes from Point A to Point B, where Point A is "Jamesian pragmatism and romantic nature-worship" and Point B is "here is a specific exact cosmological description of reality as it really is in itself, involving the following elements arranged in the following way ..."

To me, Point A gets you a kind of open-ended and unsatisfying pluralism, at best amounting to nature-mysticism, at worst amounting to asymptotic naturalist epistemology. Without bridging the gap between A and B, Whitehead's scheme itself becomes yet another fanciful cosmology.

This brings me to problem #2, which is Whitehead's reception. You would think the answer to all this confusion would be to read his followers. But they often can't even agree on what the most basic elements in his system ARE, what their referents actually are. Nor have I seen any posts on /lit/ substantially discussing him. It's either the neovedanta guy LARPing that he has a grudge with Whitehead, or people posting "I like Whitehead."

[Anonymous No.14088125]

>>14087584
I'm fond of Whitehead too, not least because he inadvertently gave us the most compelling refutations of Parmenides and Guenon.

[Anonymous No.14088138]

>>14087584
You realize he was retroactively refuted by Parmenides, right?

[Anonymous No.14088167]

>>14088125
>Proactive refutations
Like a baby. Come back when your refutations are retroactive

[Anonymous No.14088177]

>>14088167
THIS.

[Anonymous No.14088302]

>>14087584
Imagine thinking that a retroactively refuted clown could possibly save anyone from anything

[Anonymous No.14088520]

If you want a real eye-opener, read Aztec Metaphysics. Great ideas spring from multiple wells, and Heraclitus, the Aztecs, and Whitehead all arrive at this same conclusions for the same reasons. I feel this is a bit easier to "get" than Whitehead, as Whitehead uses the language of academic philosophy instead of more lay terms.


Ignore the Discord shills upset because Parmenides retortitively borfed Whitehead via Guenon, and remember
>it's up on libgen

[Anonymous No.14088534]

>>14088520
>its the fucking aztecs guy again
look you stupid faggot, our discord group has been having a lot of fun with our memes, and you keep fucking ruining it. just fuck off, nobody actually wants to read about this stuff, were all just here for the memes

[Anonymous No.14088557]

>>14087584
he was retroactively refuted

[Anonymous No.14088572]

>>14087584
>It's the only way to save Western philosophy from rank cartesianism
Peirce has obviously been more successful than Whitehead in this regard, but he can save science too. There is a reason that, although controversial for modern science, the Peircean semiotic, evolutionary, pragmatic and triadic philosophy has been the only modern conceptual framework that can support that transdisciplinary change in our view of knowing that bridges the two cultures and transgresses Cartesian dualism and meanwhile only new agers and the CPC appropriate Whitehead.

[Anonymous No.14088595]

>>14088520
>If you want a real eye-opener, read Aztec Metaphysics. Great ideas spring from multiple wells, and Heraclitus, the Aztecs, and Whitehead all arrive at this same conclusions for the same reasons.

how convenient

[Anonymous No.14088845]

>>14088118
>>14088124
*Tips* I wish Whiteheads discord cult would follow your example. There is nothing to reply to in these incessant shitposts.
>At first I was just frustrated, because I couldn't find a point of epistemological ingress into Whitehead's system, which obviously massively reduces its appeal.
This is the same problem I am dealing with. You are lucky to have a friend who actually discusses Whitehead with you, I only have the spammers.
>My friend has successfully convinced me that there is more to Whitehead, and I do agree with him that even a "leapfrogging" epistemology might involve some valuable esoteric element that doesn't fit the conventional schemes
Agreed
"A deeper study has taught me that even out of the mouths of babes and sucklings strength may be brought forth, and that weak metaphysical trash has sometimes contained the germs of conceptions capable of growing up into important and positive doctrines"
CS Peirce
>but still: I don't see how Whitehead goes from Point A to Point B, where Point A is "Jamesian pragmatism and romantic nature-worship" and Point B is "here is a specific exact cosmological description of reality as it really is in itself, involving the following elements arranged in the following way ..."
This is just my hunch and I realize that it's ridiculously biased; Whitehead can be reconciled with a scientific apporach to metaphysics by appropriating his cosmology into the Peirceian architectonic scheme. Remember the entire purpose of trichometry is mapping the relation from "point A to point B"(of course the triad can't be stated in those terms but you get the point.) I am uncertain(logic noob) but I vehemently guess that Peirce's reduction thesis holds true for Whiteheads speculative scheme, and that Whiteheads "deepend dyad" can be rendered systematic as a triad.
Anyways, I just wanted to know that I appreciate you and hope to see you post more. Sorry I can't keep up with your effort posting, I have more to say(epistemology, sorry I didn't even touch your main assertion), but I'm in a pathetic state and must attend IRL.

[Anonymous No.14089166]

@aminim/eris I summon you

[Anonymous No.14089173]

@aminom/eris I summon you

[Anonymous No.14089184]

>>14088572
Peirce is based, too. Not accusing you of this necessarily but I think it’s funny when anons pretend that Whitehead and Peirce are mutually exclusive options. Actual thinkers appreciate them both. It’s almost like no ones even bothered to read D&G. And if you wanna fix science read early Latour (ANT is retarded but We Have Never Been Modern is the most redpilled take on academia ever, tearing postmodernists, doctrinaire marxists, and reactionary scientists new assholes left and right)

[Anonymous No.14089211]

>>14088118
He believes there is no universe that is not perceived just like Kant (subjects are spatializations/temporalizations of a field or domain that pre-exists them, not spotlights in a noumenal darkness), but unlike Kant, he doesn't believe that the structure of the mind is enough to prove that, somehow, the mind also generates itself. As he puts it, the transcendental facts of cognition are not enough to "authorize" cognition as the author of nature.

The mind is emergent within a larger totality: nature. More to the point, it's an extremely complex output of that field, but again, just one output out of many, human consciousness doesn't have ontological priority over the "prehensive centers" of simpler organisms.

[Anonymous No.14089221]

>>14089211
who keeps pasting these lol

[Anonymous No.14089302]

>>14089184
I think they are complementary, I'm just frustrated with low content Whitehead spammers, I really want to engage with Whitehead on his own terms but I can't buy into his scheme if I don't introduce semiotic mediation. So I try to bait(maybe I am too baneful) whitehead spammers into putting effort into explaining Whitehead to my terms, without putting too much effort in myself. I've been into ATP for a few weeks now I'm convinced it's one of the most important books to read. I trust your Latour recommendation because you know ANT is retarded, thanks.

[Anonymous No.14089316]

>>14088124
>neovedanta guy
nobody on /lit/ reads, promotes or talks about neovedanta, people here mostly just read Shankara and other traditional writings, which are not neovedanta, get your facts straight

[Anonymous No.14089327]

>>14089316
>neo-vedantist triggered someone called his neo-vedantism neo-vedantism

hello dravidian

[Anonymous No.14089340]

@ANINOM/ERIS I SUMMON YOU

[Anonymous No.14089344]

@AMINOM/ERIS I SUMMON YOU

[Anonymous No.14089361]

>>14089184
>>14089302
>I've been into ATP for a few weeks now I'm convinced it's one of the most important books to read.
This being said I'm still very disappointed that d&g didn't get Peirce's sign relation when they were writing ATP. They just appropriate his trichotomous sign classes without understanding the triadic sign relation (as evidenced by them lamenting that Peirce's semieotic doesn't move past the dichotomous signifier/signified relation)
So like Whitehead, I need semiotic mediation to agree with d&g take, so far.
Should I read assemblage theory next?

[Anonymous No.14089375]

>>14089361
I haven't read it yet but maybe check out Symbolism, its Meaning and Effect

[Anonymous No.14089414]

>>14089327
brainlet

[Anonymous No.14089436]

>>14089414
most modern hindus are neo-vedantists like you, and india is a shithole... coincidence?

[Anonymous No.14089512]

>>14089436
im not indian nor do i care about the wealth or lack thereof in india, by devolving into /pol/-tier attacks all you've done is display your own ineptitude, is this the power of Whiteheadians? kek

[Anonymous No.14089539]

>>14089512
whitehead is retarded

keep misreading shankara through your neo-vedantist lens, it's working out for you really well. at least it's entertaining to read whenever you post your crap here, good job betraying your own heritage

[Anonymous No.14089565]

>>14089539
>keep misreading shankara through your neo-vedantist lens
You don't even know what you are talking about, this is just your excuse for a response to cope with your lack of any argument. I'm well acquainted with both Shankara and where he differs from neovedanta. You don't know shit about either.

[Anonymous No.14089575]

>>14089565
being well-acquainted with your neo-vedantist 101 understanding of shankara is not being well-acquainted with shankara. anyone who has read your posts knows you don't know anything about shankara

like i said, good job betraying your own heritage

[Anonymous No.14089583]

>>14089575
>anyone who has read your posts knows you don't know anything about shankara
you can either post proof of this, or not which would be tacitly conceding that you're talking out of your ass

[Anonymous No.14089606]

>>14089583
the last ten threads where you got called out for being a neo-vedantist by multiple people should have been proof enough for you

you have two audiences, the people who have no idea what you're talking about on the one hand, and on the other hand, the people who know better than you because they actually study real vedanta, unlike you. the first group doesn't care and so can't be impressed when you demonstrate your shallow neo-vedantist understanding of shankara. and the second group consistently calls you out on it every time you post. i'd be embarrassed to post here if i were you, every person who has actually studied shankara immediately calls you on your westernized kitschified understanding of your own tradition. it's happened so many times i feel bad for you

why don't you spend some time actually studying shankara instead of reading primers prepared by westerners? at least stop posting your western kitsch pseudo-shankara and embarrassing yourself

[Anonymous No.14089624]

>>14089302
OP here. Don't go on /lit/ or 4chan much anymore and didn't know there's Whitehead spam. Just genuinely enjoying Whitehead. I will look into Peirce.

>>14088102
Cool, I didn't think about Parmenides, but this is interesting. Genuine question, does Parmenides render all process philosophy mute?

>>14088118
hey, there's a lot here, and I'm just a big dummy.
>He is very sympathetic to it because he wants a return of authentic speculative metaphysics
this is pretty much the reason I was attracted to Whitehead. I wish I could genuinely engage with you but I'm just legit too stupid. I've copied your posts and will keep them in mind while I'm reading P&R.

>>14088124
>people posting "I like Whitehead."
yeah, my bad. When I actually went on 4chan I cared about low effort posts but I was spending too much time on 4chan and getting mad over low effort posts so now if I do go on 4chan I don't care. But yeah, my bad.

>>14088520
unironically kinda interested in reading this.

>>14088572
Cool I'll look into Peirce. What should I start with?

>>14088845
>Whiteheads discord cult
there's a whitehead discord?

[Anonymous No.14089641]

>>14089606
It's hilarious to me that you thought it would be a good idea to type out that whole paragraph that was nothing but a bunch of hot air. Name or show one (1) thing that I've ever written that's been neovedanta. Accusations mean nothing, people often use it as a meaningless pejorative. If you want to stop embarrassing yourself I'd recommend that you either post proof of your claims or stop digging your hole deeper.

[Anonymous No.14089645]

>>14089624
>Genuine question, does Parmenides render all process philosophy mute?
unironically yes

[Anonymous No.14089654]

>>14089302
Redpill me on Peirce what is he about? I am a fan if Whitehead and was thinking of checking out the American Pragmatists.

[Anonymous No.14089667]

>>14089624
>does Parmenides render all process philosophy mute?
No. It's a meme from an illiterate paki that cant comprehend anything past kiddie philosophy.

[Anonymous No.14089695]

>>14089667
it looks like you couldn't contend with the Eleatic doctrine either lad

[Anonymous No.14089722]

>>14089302
It’s been a second since I read ATP. I don’t recall them having that lamentation about Peirce. Do you mind directing me to where it is so I can see it? Also yeah read assemblage theory next.

[Anonymous No.14089733]

>>14089641
write something that isn't neo-vedantist garbage for once and maybe someone will engage with you for once.

how about this. you go read some shankara for the first time in your life. or keep embarrassing yourself on a forum full of people who know you as 'the neo-vedantist guy' whichever, it's up to you neo-vedantist guy.

[Anonymous No.14089740]

>>14089654
He’s about a lot of stuff. To make it excessively simple, he introduces the concept of indexicality to turn the binary signifier/signified relationship into one that refers to social reality. So the sign itself is not magically threaded to the thing it signifies but is itself caught up in reality. Retards use a bastardized version of this to argue for micro aggressions being literal murder in anthropology departments now, but the actual philosophy is very based and interesting. If you can do it, building a strong basis in linguistics from Saussure to Silverstein (at least) will make you a much better reader of social theory in general, since it basically has most of the arguments sociologists and anthropologists have in the 20th century decades earlier and quite rigorously.

[Anonymous No.14089752]

>>14089733
>more butthurt attacks
>still no proof

[Anonymous No.14089766]

>>14089722
It's not from the text, the evidence is in the first chapter of wendy wheelers book, expecting the earth: life culture and biosemiotics.

[Anonymous No.14089786]

>>14089766
I’ll look into it. I just remember in the text Peirce being one of the very few directly cited authors that they say they like, and their project seems to be in the same spirit. It strikes me as odd they’d misunderstand Peirce in such a way given that they recapitulate a lot of his ideas in the book.

[Anonymous No.14089788]

>>14089752
up to you, neo-vedantist

you've been here a few years now at least? and never, not once, had a real human exchange with a poster who wasn't a fucking buddhist lmao. the only people you talk to are fucking retard buddhists, another GREAT SIGN that you're a follower of shankara and tradition hahaha. probably a former buddhist cultist yourself who 'got into shankara' (neo-vedanta) just to spite them

actually that's wrong, once in a while i see you talking to someone about vedanta but it's when they're schooling your theosophical ass and you flee the thread

see you in the next buddhism thread, dravidian. oh right, no i won't, because i won't be there... you will be though

[Anonymous No.14089818]

>>14089788
>more butthurt attacks
>STILL no proof

[Anonymous No.14089830]

>>14089766
I'm convinced btw but I do not have the book with me and it's been awhile. This matches with anecdotal signs of d&g not understanding I witnessed in ATP

[Anonymous No.14089894]

Can the neovedanta and anti-neovedanta anons please fuck off to their own thread?

[Anonymous No.14089901]

>>14089786
Too be fare, Peirce's semieotic was obscure and underexplored in that time, and still is somewhat. They seem to get the sign relation, what they don't seem to get is his sign mediated ontology. But the way Peirce works you just need a few germs to get infected. So with that said I'm probably mostly wrong. Please don't mistake me for someone that knows what they are talking about lol.

[Anonymous No.14091177]

>>14089740
What does Saussure to Silverstein have to do with Peirce? I thought Peirceian semiotics was its own thing.

[Anonymous No.14091192]

>>14089624
>What should I start with?
Maybe "a guess at the riddle"
Just start reading Peirce, his whole system is based on the same relation you just need to explore it broadly for a while.

[Anonymous No.14091204]

>>14091177
Sapir, Whorf, Jakobson, and Silverstein all draw from Peirce to critique earlier conceptions of linguistics. But yes Peirce isn’t formally in this lineage himself.

[Anonymous No.14092625]

>Peirceian semiotics
https://youtu.be/zuZ2yoZiArg
WTF

[Anonymous No.14092854]

>>14087584
Correct.
But academia despises him due to the same reason you mentioned.

[Anonymous No.14093974]

>>14092854
academia doesn't despise him

[Anonymous No.14094524]

>>14087584
>Process Philosophy
Is it some kind of a variation of the A-theory of time?

[Anonymous No.14094698]

>>14092625
do you need to be a 300IQ schizo to understand this?