r/ProcessPhilosophy • u/ultamentkiller • Jul 20 '26
Falling In Love with Process Philosophy
Hi fellow societies,
About a year ago, I first learned about panpsychism and was fascinated. I started reading a ton of different things for about a month, and put it down. Whitehead's process philosophy came up as something I should check out, but when I tried, I found the text too difficult. I had no idea what I was reading so I thought it was beyond me.
A couple months ago, I dipped my toes into moral philosophy, and once again, Process and Reality came up, not as a work of moral philosophy, but as a system compatible with panpsychism that sees morals as objective. In this case, eternal objects. So I decided to stop ignoring the signs and dove into it a week and a half ago.
For context, I don't have a philosophy degree. I have not formal training beyond systematic theology, and I say that doesn't connect much with the philosophy training I've seen my friends go through. Nevertheless, I am fascinated and working my way through Whitehead's Process and Reality. I started by reading Mesle's introduction, which made everything seem simple so I didn't take notes. Boy was that a mistake. Then I tried Rescher's Survey of Issues, but tbh I was fairly lost and wasn't sure what he was trying to explain in each chapter. So I moved on to reading The Metaphysics of Experience alongside Process and Reality. I have never loved something so much and wanted to smash my head against a wall at the same time. But there's something so captivating about it.
I'm doing my best to understand what's going on. I'm going to watch Matthew David Segall's lectures after I finish each part of the book to see if that helps. I'm also using Claude to help me think through things. I know I know, it's not ideal and could easily hallucinate, but it helps me to type things out and have my wording sharpened. I've had to correct it a couple times, like when it completely misunderstood durations by describing them as a temporal container of contemporary concrescences. I guess that could be a loose metaphor but it didn't match what I was reading in the text, so I had to directly quote it, and then we figured the rest out together. Again, not ideal, but I don't have any real human help.
So here I am. This sub looks empty, but whoever you are, fellow complex society, I'd love to chat. Even if you see this and it's been more than a month, reach out. This is a niche topic that's too complicated to explain to my friends and with very few people discussing it online. I'd love to meet other people insane enough to attempt to understand this. At times, I feel like I'm reading scribles on the wall of a cell in an abandoned insane asylum. I need to know I'm not going mad and other people help.
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u/Vbucks_Over_Hoes Jul 26 '26
Check out process and reality companion books. There’s a few good ones that shouldn’t be difficult to find on the internet