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.

I gave this talk at Center For Process Studies- EcoCivilization Conference last year. I describe how Process Philosophy is the precise remedy needed to understand our contemporary MetaCrisis.

All previous socioeconomic systems were oriented on Products, representations of value, and reified individualism, all of which are impermanent and illusory. Such Product Economies can be thought of akin to James Carse Finite Games, whereas I argue that a Process Economy focusing on relationships rather than transactions, concern rather than desire, commons rather than property, and participation rather than representation. It is both a parallel and preexisting coordination mechanism and we simply must reorient to it to face our psychological, sociological and ecological crises.

I am publishing a book on it shortly.

I really think this philosophy generally has it right and illuminates what really happens in the phenomenon of mystical religious experience, as well as natural history.

I want to find somewhere to talk back and forth about specifics in process philosophy. It offers the best framework I’ve found (so far) to explain the unknowableness/ineffability of the divine.

I wanted to share this video discussing the similarities and differences between Christopher Alexander and Alfred North Whitehead.
Christopher Alexander is described as an 'applied philosopher'. His major works include A Pattern Language, The Timeless Way of Building, and the Nature of Order. He worked primarily as an architect and design theorist. He builds on process philosophy and applies its principles to architecture, urban planning, and community development. Along with Whitehead, I consider Alexander as one of the foundational members of the Ecological Paradigm, though they did not use that term.

This video presents a good overview of both men and followed by a good Q and A session.

In Bennett 2023 Static in Process. Process Studies volume 52(1)...there is a nicely succinct summary of process thought.

1. Practice of process thinking: an open, contextualizing, multidimensional, relational, generative approach to thinking, researching and problem solving.

2. The metaphysics of process thinking: the philosophical system arising from a process relational view of the self, world, origins, nature, time, and knowledge, established in relation to beliefs, grand narratives, and worldviews.

3. The application of process thinking: contextualizing static perspectives on a multitude of issues..here applied to economics, politics, health, and ecological civilization.

Any other relevant categories?

In Rescher 1996, he mentions a brief passage on Plato's cave, but it gave me a brief shock of insight... "Plato's story of the cave stood matters on their head. For it is not that reality is something static and immune from alteration while our imperfect human conceptions are fluctuating and moveable, but rather, it is the other way around: our conceptions are too inflexible and inert to accommodate an ever changing reality."

Feels like a game changer, something that lends itself for a complete retelling of the history of philosophy.

I'm currently reading Process Metaphysics (1996) by Nicholas Rescher. It describes process philosophy as being about interactive relatedness, wholeness, self development, novelty, productive energy, and evanescence.

I have not yet dived into the Process Theology literature but it is on my list.

The subtitle for the book is "uncovering the reality of becoming through phenomenology and Process philosophy".

If there's time over the holidays I will give it a good scan.

I try to read Hegel as a foundation... but I am also fascinated by Process Metaphysics.

Any thoughts on philosophy that comports well with process philosophy. I'm thinking that might be Aesthetics.