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Praesens de futuris: Whitehead on How to Be Going to Move Forward into the Future

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Abstract

Whitehead’s metaphysics involves an event ontology. Fundamental—that is, in Whitehead’s language: “actual”—entities are events, described as acts of experience. It also involves presentism since past events have perished and future events do not yet exist according to Whitehead. Hence the question alluded to in the title of the present paper: “How are you going to move forward into the future?… If you conceive it under the guise of a temporal transition into the non-existent, you can’t get going.” (See T2 below) I will argue that, to a large extent, Whitehead’s metaphysics is designed to answer that question.

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Notes

  1. That's commonplace since Aristotle (Phys. IV 10, 217b33 f.) and Augustine (Conf. IX, 14/17—on which see Flasch 2004, 345 f.).

  2. Again, that's commonplace since Aristotle (Phys. IV 13, 222a10 ff.: the "now" is a limit between past and future) and Augustine (Conf. IX, 20/26—on which see below Sect. 1.4).

  3. Note that explaining truth in terms of truthmakers or facts would again give priority to an existential force of 'to be'. But see Davidson (2013) on truthmaking for presentism.

  4. This comes close to McKinnon's claim that "it makes better sense to define presentism in terms of tensed instantiation than tensed existence" (McKinnon 2013, 23).

  5. DK 28 B 8.5 f.: οὐδέ ποτ' ἦν οὐδ' ἔσται, ἐπεὶ νῦν ἔστιν ὁμοῦ πᾶν, | ἕν, συνεχές. If not indicated otherwise, translations are mine.

  6. DK 28 B 6.1: χρὴ τὸ λέγειν τε νοεῖν τ' ἐὸν ἔμμεναι·… Translations vary from "What there is to be said and thought must needs be:…" (KRS p. 247) to "It is necessary to say and think that What is is" (Palmer 2016, Sect. 2.2).

  7. DK 28 B 8.26: akinêton.

  8. DK 29 A 27 = Zeno in Aristotle, Phys. VI 9, 239b6-7: ἔστιν δ′ αἰεὶ… ἐν τῷ νῦν.—A remote echo of this may be also heard in Plato's Parmenides where the One (i.e. the subject matter of the 2nd hypothesis) "… is always now, whenever it is" (… ἔστι γὰρ ἀεὶ νῦν ὅτανπερ ᾖ′Parm. 152e1-2).

  9. Aristotle, Phys. IV 10, 218a10 and passim: allo kai allo. The crucial passage in Aristotle's account of time is ibid. 11, 219b12-15 where the contrast of ho pote on and to einai is employed to avoid the inconsistencies inherent in the notion of the "now" being "other and other" (for which see the passage in Plato's Parmenides mentioned above). See Heinemann (2016a, 54 f.) (with references).

  10. Whitehead, SMW 124–127; PR 35, 68–69, 307. See Heinemann (2007).

  11. Descartes, Principia Philosophiae I 21 (AT VIII 1, 13): nullam vim esse in nobis, per quam nos ipsos conservemus. Similarly, Meditationes III 32 (AT VII 49).

  12. Descartes, Meditationes III 31 (AT VII 49): conservationem sola ratione a creatione differre.

  13. Ibid. III 31 (AT VII 48 f.): Quoniam… omne tempus vitae in | partes innumeras dividi potest, quarum singulae a reliquis nullo modo dependent, ex eo quod paulo ante fuerim non sequitur me nunc debere esse,nisi aliqua causa me quasi rursus creet ad hoc momentum, hoc est me conservet.

  14. Ibid. II 3 (AT VII 25): hoc pronuntiatum: ego sum, ego existo,quoties a me profertur, vel mente concipitur, necessario esse verum.

  15. Ibid. III 28–39 (AT VII 47–52). See Carriero (2009, 197 ff.)

  16. Whitehead, PR 137.5. Cf. ibid. 136.25–30, quoting Descartes, Principia Philosophiae I 21 (AT VIII 1, 13). The other quotations at PR 136 are of Hume, Treatise I ii, 3, and Descartes, Principia Philosophiae I 55 (AT VIII 1, 26).

  17. Whitehead, PR 137.16. Cf. SMW 49 and passim.

  18. Augustine, Confessiones XI, 20/26: tempora sunt tria, praesens de praeterities, praesens de praesentibus, praesens de futuris.

  19. Ibid. 28/38: praesens… attentio…, per quam traicitur quod erat futurum, ut fiat praeteritum.

  20. Prior (1967, 14).

  21. See PR 18.23, 22.5, 73.17, 77.1–4 etc. An exception is God who is an actual entity according to Whitehead, but is not referred to in PR by "actual occasion" (see PR 88.29 f.). Yet, Whitehead also announces that in PR, "actual entity" is not regularly meant to include God (ibid. 88.27–29).

  22. Locke, Essay II xiv 1.

  23. Whitehead, PR 137.1 f., see above 1.3 (T5).

  24. Note that, in terms of PR 214 f., "microcosmic" process is thus described; "macroscopic process" corresponds to the becoming of the world as a whole (see PR 215.1–4).

  25. As a consequence, actual entities occupy extended regions in the "extensive continuum" which they "atomize" (PR 62.21). For in a continuum, if the parts of which it is composed form a discrete series, each item in the series must be extended.

  26. Aristotle Met. IV 3, 1005b19-20: "For any Φ and a, it is impossible that Φ jointly (hama) holds true of a, and in the same respect (kata to auto) does not hold true of a." (τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ [sc. Φ] ἅμα ὑπάρχειν τε καὶ μὴ ὑπάρχειν ἀδύνατον τῷ αὐτῷ [sc. a] καὶ κατὰ τὸ αὐτό…). In my interpretation, Aristotle's hama has no temporal connotation; time or tense is a respect the principle may require to be distinguished (see Heinemann 2016a, 56 f.).

  27. In (7), existential force of "is" is suggested by Whitehead's use of the term ‘becoming’. But it should be noted that actual entities are events which involve propositional structures. Hence, existential force involves veridical force. See Sect. 5 in Heinemann (1990).

  28. Note that this does not account for contemporaries of e. Contemporaries of e are neither past nor future of e, but share with e some future and past.

  29. See Sect. 6 in Heinemann (1990).

  30. See my footnote to Sect. 1.1.

  31. Λέγω δὴ τὸ καὶ ὁποιανοῦν [τινα] κεκτημένον δύναμιν εἴτ' εἰς τὸ ποιεῖν ἕτερον ὁτιοῦν πεφυκὸς εἴτ' εἰς τὸ παϑεῖν…, πᾶν τοῦτο ὄντως εἶναι· τίϑεμαι γὰρ ὅρον ὁρίζειν τὰ ὄντα ὡς ἔστιν οὐκ ἄλλο τι πλὴν δύναμις. (Plato, Sophist 247d8-e4; tr. Cornford, with modification).

  32. A remote echo of T13 may be perceived in Whitehead's adaption of the link between "substance" and "power" in Locke (Essay II xxiii 7; PR 18.33 ff. and passim).

  33. See the discussion in Cornford's preface (1935, pp. v–vi).

  34. See AI 111 f. where the "doctrine of Law as immanent" is described in a way which strongly corresponds to the metaphysics of PR. See also Whitehead's note in the margin to the statement of his "principle of relativity" (PR 22.35, cf. T15 below), as reported in the Editors' Notes to the Corrected Edition, p. 394: "cf. Plato's Sophist 247 i.e. disjunctive diversity is potentiality."

  35. See my footnote to Sect. 2.2.

  36. See above Sect. 1.2.

  37. Here is the full quotation again: "Zeno: How are you going to move forward into the future? How is process possible? If you conceive it under the guise of a temporal transition into the non-existent, you can't get going. There is nothing you can point to into which there is a transition, or is there and then created." See T2 above.

  38. Arguably, this is just what Aristotle does in Phys. VI—see Simplicius In Phys. 1011.11 ff. (on Phys. 239b5) and 1012.29 ff. (on Phys. 239b9).

  39. PR 27.30–32 (italics there; “controls”: PR 25.16).

  40. PR 278.22–25.—Occurrences of the term "anticipatory feeling" in Process and Reality are: PR 27.35 (context of T19), 278.23 (T20), 278.25 f. (context of T20).

  41. PR 244 f. (quotations: PR 244.20, ibid. 13, ibid. 12; “primordial nature” of God: PR 67.20 and passim).

  42. PR 244.22–25, cf. PR 27.30 ff.—The functioning of God is thus comparable to the functioning of “nature” in Aristotle which “always, given the possibilities, does what is best for the substantial being of each kind of animal” (De incessu animalium 4, 704b15-17: ἡ φύσις … ποιεῖ … ἀεὶ ἐκ τῶν ἐνδεχομένων τῇ οὐσίᾳ περὶ ἕκαστον γένος ζῴου τὸ ἄριστον, tr. Lennox 2001, 206; cf. Heinemann 2016b, 246). According to Whitehead, this principle also applies “if the best be bad” and “(t)he chaff is burned” (PR 244.21 f.)—whereas “nature” in Aristotle “does nothing in vain” (loc. cit. 704b15: ἡ φύσις οὐϑὲν ποιεῖ μάτην).

  43. This suggests that time is distinguished as a dimension in the extensive continuum which, of course, is far from the general case. Extensive continuity is described by Whitehead in abstract mereological terms (PR IV ii ff., p. 294 ff.). Translated into point-set language, the extensive continuum is just described as a topological space.

    Geometrical features in displayed by the following illustrations do not necessarily convey structures characteristic of the succession of actual entities. In particular, there is nothing in Whitehead to which the empty space I leave between the regions marked by circles refer. Whitehead’s description of the "actual world" as a "plenum" (PR 77.13 ff.) may suggest that the regions occupied by actual entities are tightly packed. But I am quite agnostic to the obvious geometrical issues involved in this.

  44. See above, Fig. 2.

  45. See above, Fig. 3.

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    Gottfried Heinemann

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Heinemann, G. Praesens de futuris: Whitehead on How to Be Going to Move Forward into the Future. Axiomathes 29, 17–32 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-016-9325-z

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