The Process of Self-Knowledge

People are, in a sense, entities. We exist is a social construct—a culture—and we prehend each other in much the same way as actual entities do in Alfred North Whitehead’s work, Process and Reality. In the history of philosophy, the idea of self-knowledge has been a recurring theme. So one might ask, in what way can we think of the process of knowing one’s self as a process of prehending entities? I intend to demonstrate that the prehensions we have with the actual world continually define our psyche. We are never defined as a totality of being, as an existentialist might put it, but are in a continual process of becoming. And while this line of thought could be directed towards a discussion about the physical processes of how our bodies develop, it is my intention to discuss the development of the psyche—the so-called mental self or personality. I will have to push the thoughts of Whitehead to more complex descriptions while trying to keep his essential thoughts intact. I hope that by utilizing Whitehead’s terminology and thought along with modern phenomenological ideas about consciousness, I might better illuminate how it is we think what we do, and possibly why.

(1) Activities within the brain result in thought, which are essentially actual entities or groups of actual entities (nexus). But by ‘thoughts’ I do not intend to mean those conscious experiences of the verbal nature, but simple neural interactions within the network of the brain. The neuro-chemical interaction that creates a pattern of activity in the brain that forms the basis for all we experience and do as a being are analogous to how the actual entity acts as the basis for the concrescence of the nexus. Thoughts and actual entities[1] are in a sense atomic (cf. PR 235), in that they are in a sense located in a time and space (especially in the case of the neuron). Actual entities have definite causes and definite effects. The causes are ‘feelings’ and their effects are feelings as well. More generally, these feelings are a part of a complex event called prehension, which is how entities interact, transform, and evolve. At the same time, thoughts are not random firings of neurons; they also have causes and effects. Thoughts seem to smoothly develop from prior thoughts or direct conscious experiences in much the same way that actual entities are derived from prehensions from other actual entities—whether singularly or as part of a nexus. It will be understood that when I refer to thoughts I will mean those basic neural activities, and that they will also inter-changeably refer to actual entities.

(2) Thoughts are interdependent with the actual world as well as the nexus of thoughts within the mind itself. Thoughts are subject to what Whitehead calls the ‘ontological principle’; “Everything in the actual world is referable to some actual entity” (PR 244), nothing comes from no-thing. Process philosophy, or as Whitehead calls it, Philosophy of organism, works under more complex rules than that of Hume’s philosophy, but does not repudiate Hume’s ‘impressions’ which can be utilized here to help us conceive of this process. Thoughts are ultimately dependent upon stimuli (‘physical feelings’) in order to be defined, much in the same way that the creation of an (positively prehended) actual entity depends on feelings of other actual entities. These stimuli come from physical senses (‘ simple physical feelings’) and from impressions from prior sensual experiences—much in the sense that Hume talked about with ‘impressions’ but which Whitehead calls ‘conceptual feelings’ (which are derived from ‘eternal objects’). And while this may appear dualistic, Whitehead conceives of it as interplay between the physical and mental poles. The mental is dependent upon the physical in much the same way that Aristotle says that we must begin with actual objects in order to create ideas to conceive of—their must be a chair before there is an idea of a chair. In much the same way, an actual entity must be prehended by the nexus of the mind in order to create a ‘conceptual feeling’—a concept—based on that actual entity of nexus of actual entities from the actual world.

(3) Our mind is effected by ‘negative prehension,’ and does not simply passively take in the world. As Kant pointed out in his Copernican Revolution, the mind actively interprets the world using the process of what we can call, in light of Whitehead, prehension. The negative prehension is the most interesting idea concerning this discussion because it is what ultimately is responsible for novelty in the world, including our mind. If thoughts were just a re-hashing of old thoughts and actual entities in the actual world, then new ideas would never arise. “Apart from interference [from negative prehensions], the subjective form is a re-enaction of the subjective form of the feeling felt.” (PR 237) The subjective form is in a sense the feeling actualized for the actual entity. Using Whitehead’s terms, if all prehensions were ‘positive,’ then novelty would never effect the concrescence of the actual entity, and we would essentially have a universe full of actual entities cloning themselves, thoughts cloning thoughts. This idea of error creating novelty differs from Hume in that for Hume, impressions could in essence be combined to create new ideas in the mind whereas for Whitehead, the major factor is not the combining of feelings from the nexus per se so much as it is the nature of the ‘negative prehension’ itself. Daniel Dennet, in his Consciousness Explained, talks about consciousness as having to deal with the constraints and pressures of time which force it to process events experienced in a way that essentially rewrites our experience for our conscious experience of those events (cf. Dennet 144-5). Either the event is rewritten prior to our awareness of it, or our memories of events are rewritten after the fact (cf. Dennet 119). To our later self, there is little difference to us. In terms of the former possibility, however, the idea of the negative prehension could be the culprit.

(4) The ‘negative prehension’ also manifests itself on the larger scale of the nexus, in this case a nexus of thoughts or ‘thought-nexus’. This seems to fit with what Whitehead calls ‘transmuted feelings.’ All feelings have an ‘objective datum’ from which they originate, and are a kind of process for transmission of information form one actual entity to another. In the case of the transmuted feeling, “the objective datum is a nexus of actual entities.” (PR 232) An event, which is itself a kind of nexus in that it is a collection of actual occasions, can come together to create a transmuted feeling which will act as the stimulus for the conceptual feeling to become actualized in the entity of thought. The feeling felt by the mind effects the prehended thought-nexus. In other words, a nexus in the actual world (outside of the mind) effects the thought nexus through a transmuted feeling in much the same way that complex information can be encoded and transmitted through a stream from one computer to another. This idea is based on the “Categorical Condition of ‘Transmutation’”, which is described thus; “Our usual way of consciously prehending the world is by these transmuted physical feelings” (PR 253) which is to say that what we experience consciously is essentially a concrescence of stimuli from events prehended through ‘physical feelings.’ These physical feelings created conceptual feelings in the thought nexus—the physical pole generates the mental pole, as Whitehead would say. (PR 239)

(5) Negative prehension will cause the actual entity from the actual world to recreate itself as part of the concrescence of the new thought-nexus. This is a point that was not discussed explicitly in Process and Reality, but I believe is implied in the theory of prehensions. When stimuli (feelings from actual entities) come into the brain (nexus) for processing into thought (newly prehended actual entity or nexus), it will not simply be positively prehended, but will encounter negative prehension that will transform the nexus according to the nature of the nexus. And while the positive prehension will change the nexus in a quantitative sense—it will add something to it—the negative prehension has the potential to create a thought that is truly novel to the actual world of the mind, thus it can spur growth and change. The nexus is a group of actual entities that is constantly prehending itself, and any new incoming feelings from the actual world will effect the next concrescence of the thought-nexus. The point is that the nexus feels the actual entity being prehended in much the same way that a filter or lens will effect the substance coming through it—however not so simply as this. Thus, because the prehension of the actual entity from the actual world changes the thought-nexus, the new thought-nexus will include the new actual entity. Also, the process will ultimately change the ‘subjective form’ of the actual entity prehended due to its relation with the thought-nexus. Thus, the actual entity both effects the thought-nexus while re-creating itself in the mind, but not necessarily positively.

(6) The mind, or psyche, is the result of the concrescence of thought-nexñs. Whitehead describes the world as a “medium for transmission” of prehensions through nexñs in much the same way as a neurologist might describe the brain as a medium of transmission for thought-processes. Neural components cooperate, whether through design or chance, in such a way that a conscious awareness is created consisting of thoughts, opinions, feelings, dreams, aversions, etc. While negative prehensions do act as an agent of change or novelty, prehensions will still tend towards similar transmissions from one thought to another and creating a stream of thought rather than a chaotic sequence of thoughts. Not even the negative prehension in its error of transmission will change the actual entity so much that there is no recognizable relationship. As prehension continues throughout the network of the neural pathways and over time, a pattern of thought-nexñs will eventually form. Thought-nexñs will take on habitual behavior patterns based on the particular experience of the thought-nexus. That is to say that the many thought-nexñs will integrate into a personality or even an awareness[2] at the highest level of this hierarchy of nexñs. The thought-nexñs that constitute the psyche, therefore, seem not to be centralized in the same way that a processor does with a computer, or with the model of consciousness that Dennet refers to as the “Cartesian Theater.”[3] This is significant because it demonstrates the complex nature of the psyche, and therefore the complex nature of the personality. Thus it seems to know ourselves, we have to dig through the possibility that what we are conscious of might be the result of multiple thought-nexñs coming together into a concrescence of awareness. In a sense, it is a self-perpetuating psyche, but only so far as positive prehension is concerned.

(7) The nature of the process of prehension will define what the psyche is, especially during the psyche’s early development. That is to say that early on in the development of the nexus, the pattern that will act as this “lens” (referred to above) will not have been formed yet (at least not with as much complexity as it will develop over time). [4] This seems to conform more with Locke’s tabula rasa than with Kant’s categories of the mind, but perhaps really indicates that the categories of Kant are not inherent in the thought-nexñs, but with the process of prehension that creates the thought nexñs, making both Locke and Kant compatible. There is an early stage of the development of the nexus that will be subject to influences from the actual world. This can be referred to as the formative stage of the thought-nexñs and, therefore, the psyche that is the concrescence of these thought-nexñs. The nexus is formed over time by having actual entities prehended into itself, essentially having it grow in complexity and size.[5] Thus, it is like building a machine of some sort; the parts used and the configuration will determine what the machine will do. In the same way, the actual entities prehended—the experiences had by the thought-nexus in its formative stage—will determine the constitution of the nexus, and influence how that nexñs of the psyche will form and function in the future. This process of the formation of the psyche is what we are becoming, as opposed to what we are. Thus it seems that the social element of nurture, particularly the idea that our early formative years, is confirmed in terms of the phenomenology of mind in concrescence with the thought of Whitehead.

All of this leads to the conclusion that Whitehead’s theory of prehensions helps describe how the mind is formed and how it works to understand the actual world around us. As I stated in the beginning of this paper, the prehensions we have with the actual world continually define who and what we are becoming. The very unit of mental activity, thought (whether it be subconscious, unconscious, or conscious) can be compared to an actual entity. The actual entities come together in nexñs of mental activities that help define how further thoughts will develop, creating a pattern of thought that helps determine the nature of the personality, manifesting in behavior. But of course this discussion has been limited to the development of the self (psychologically) in particular, but the analysis is not limited to that. As is obvious from Whitehead, this theory of prehensions is applicable to all levels of reality. Thus, it seems that there is some truth to saying that to understand the world, it is best to start by understanding the self.

Bibliography:

Cobb Jr., John B. and Pinnock, Clark H. (eds), Searching for an Adequate God: A Dialogue between Process and Free Will Theists. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2000.

Dennet, Daniel C., Consciousness Explained. Little, Brown and Company Press, New York. 1991

Whitehead, Alfred North, Process and Reality. Edited Edition. The Free Press, New York, 1978

[1] Perhaps the equivalent term ‘actual occasion’ would be more suited to this comparison, as the firing of a neuron is more easily conceived as an occasion than an entity.

[2] As for the consequences for how this effects what consciousness is, I will simply refer to Daniel Dennett’s work as it is not particularly relevant nor important to this discussion.

[3] Cf. Dennet, Consciousness Explained, chapter 5.

[4] This is reminiscent of the point David Ray Griffen makes concerning “creation through persuasion” in his essay Process Theology and the Christian Good News. (cf. Searching for an Adequate God, p. 30)

[5] This is reminiscent of Richard Dawkins’ idea of the cultural transmission of “memes.” Dennett, in discussing this phenomenon on page 207, says that all memes depend on reaching the “human mind, but a human mind is itself an artifact created when memes restructure a human brain in order to make it a better habitat for memes.” This point is very relevant to the current point being discussed.