{"id":1307,"date":"2010-06-27T15:00:17","date_gmt":"2010-06-27T20:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/06\/27\/actual-occasions\/"},"modified":"2010-06-27T15:00:17","modified_gmt":"2010-06-27T20:00:17","slug":"actual-occasions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/06\/27\/actual-occasions\/","title":{"rendered":"actual occasions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Glancing through a recent issue of the journal Subjectivity<\/a>, I noticed that their very first issue<\/a> — an impressive debut that featured an all-star cast of relational thinkers including Isabelle Stengers, Annemarie Mol, and Nigel Thrift — is freely available online (to non-subscribers). The issue also included an article by Paul Stenner<\/a> that provides an unusually lucid articulation of Whiteheadian process philosophy in the context of debates about “subjectivity.”<\/p>\n

It’s worth sharing Stenner’s 14-point description of “actual occasions,” which is Whitehead’s term for the most fundamental-level events, the process-relational building blocks of the universe (to use a mechanistic metaphor for something that’s the opposite of mechanism). While it’s full of Whiteheadian jargon, and hardly the most friendly introduction to Whitehead for the non-initiated, even if you’re unfamiliar with his basic terms you could still get a good feel for what they might mean and how they cohere into a fairly simple system. Just keep in mind the basic idea: that the universe, from the most microscopic level up, consists not of substances but of processes or events<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

1. Consistent with the fundamental concepts of physics, an actual occasion is not a substance or material but an activity of realization<\/em>.<\/p>\n

2. The concepts of realization and activity require the concept of process. Process is defined as the becoming of actual occasions<\/em>. An ontology of process <\/em>thus replaces an ontology of state or substance (Stengers, 1997, p. 67): \u201cAt an instant there is nothing. Each instant is only a way of grouping matters of fact. Thus there are no instants, conceived as simple primary entities\u2026 Thus all the interrelations of matters of fact must involve transition in their essence\u201d (Whitehead, 1934, p. 48).<\/p>\n

3. The word \u201cactual\u201d in actual occasions requires a distinction between the actual and the potential. Actuality is the realization of potential in a particular concrete form. An actual occasion \u2013 in which a subject concerns its objects \u2013 is this process of actualization.<\/p>\n

4. The realization of potential into actual form is called the process of concrescence in the sense of becoming concrete. Potential, when actualized in a given occasion, concretizes in a radically specific concrete form (this <\/em>actuality and not that <\/em>one).<\/p>\n

5. Through concrescence many things (objects, data) are grasped or prehended <\/em>through a process (i.e. through the becoming of an actual occasion) into a new unity. The many become one.<\/p>\n

6. This process of unification effects a reduction in the complexity of the prior potential. Actuality is thus a decision <\/em>(in the sense of a \u201ccutting off\u201d) amid potentiality. The exclusion of aspects of potentiality that are not selected for actualization in a given occasion is called \u201cnegative prehension\u201d.<\/p>\n

7. The inclusion of aspects of potential that are actualized is called positive prehension or feeling<\/em>. A feeling is the operation of passing from the objectivity of an object to the subjectivity of an actual occasion. The concrescence of an actual occasion is thus effected by feelings through which objects enter into the real internal constitution of a subject.<\/p>\n

8. An actual occasion is thus a pattern <\/em>grasped into the unity of an event or a selective and hence \u201cevaluative\u201d patterning <\/em>of the many into one. In other words, an actual occasion is a passage from a state of disjunctive diversity <\/em>to a state of conjunctive unity<\/em>.<\/p>\n

9. Creativity is central to this process of conjunctive synthesis<\/em>. Something new is added to the universe by the actual occasion (e.g. the pattern itself is added). \u201c[T]he many become one and are increased by one\u201d (Whitehead, 1927\u20131928\/1985, p. 21).<\/p>\n

10. This principle of creativity stresses the potential novelty of any particular instance of actualization. Potentialities, by definition, can be actualized in various different ways. The way an actual occasion does in fact actualize its potentials into concrete form is a matter of that occasion’s perspective on the many, and its \u201csubjective aim\u201d. Its specific manner of feeling the many is its \u201csubjective form\u201d.<\/p>\n

11. The subject with its perspective does not pre-exist its feelings but creates itself through them. Whitehead’s category of subjective unity <\/em>(Whitehead, 1927\u20131928\/1985, p. 222) expresses that ultimately an actual occasion is a creature that creates itself.<\/p>\n

12. One must thus distinguish the process of self-realization from its product. To do this, Whitehead distinguishes the subject from the superject. The subject is the process of self-realization considered in terms of its own novel internal constitution or in terms of the immediacy of its self enjoyment. It is the internal self-becoming of the actual occasion. The superject, by contrast, is the objective product <\/em>of these experiences \u2013 the creature of its creative process. An actual occasion is thus always di-polar, involving the subjective process of feeling and its objective product (Whitehead, 1927\u20131928\/1985, p. 29).<\/p>\n

13. As subject, the actual occasion is the becoming unity of conjunctive synthesis. As superject it takes its place as one among the many in disjunctive diversity. In short, the experience of the subject is expressed by way of the superject as an object.<\/p>\n

14. Finally, we return to process by way of the principle of relativity, which holds that \u201cit belongs to the nature of every \u2018being\u2019 that it is a potential for every \u2018becoming\u2019\u201d (Whitehead, 1927\u20131928\/1985, p. 45). Once an actual occasion becomes a determinate superject, then it can play the role of one of the many objects that are the concern of another actual occasion with its process of creative conjunctive synthesis. The subject becomes the superject, which in turn becomes the object for a new subject.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Glancing through a recent issue of the journal Subjectivity, I noticed that their very first issue — an impressive debut that featured an all-star cast of relational thinkers including Isabelle Stengers, Annemarie Mol, and Nigel Thrift — is freely available online (to non-subscribers). The issue also included an article by Paul Stenner that provides an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688977,4422],"tags":[692664,423],"class_list":["post-1307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geo_philosophy","category-process-relational-thought","tag-onto_epistemology","tag-whitehead"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-l5","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5895,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/05\/14\/for-the-moment\/","url_meta":{"origin":1307,"position":0},"title":"For the moment","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Now that a very busy semester has ended, I can return to the constructive speculative-metaphysical strand of this blog, in which I work out the process-relational philosophy I've tentatively labelled Ecosophy-G. A suitable acronym for this project might be \"pre-G\" (process-relational ecosophy-G), pronounced \"pree-jee,\" with the \"pre\" also indicating that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2012\/05\/bubble-231x275.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1237,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/04\/09\/subjects-objects-together-or-apart\/","url_meta":{"origin":1307,"position":1},"title":"subjects & objects, together or apart…","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 9, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Levi Bryant's detailed and generous replies to my critical queries, both in the comments section of this post and at Larval Subjects, and Graham Harman's replies here (and in an e-mail exchange) have helped me get a much clearer sense of where the main differences lie between their respective \"object-oriented\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1488,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/12\/09\/and-anyway\/","url_meta":{"origin":1307,"position":2},"title":"and anyway…","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 9, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Process-relational and object-oriented philosophers, as far as I can tell, share the idea that things have an interiority, a \"one's own-ness,\" that is not accessible to others in the way that it is to oneself. We can argue about where that interiority is located -- whether in one's experience (which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1911,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/12\/29\/on-anthropomorphism-making-humans-pencils-souls\/","url_meta":{"origin":1307,"position":3},"title":"On anthropomorphism: making humans, pencils, & souls","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 29, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Tim Morton has recently been suggesting that just as humans anthropomorph (that's a verb), so pencils pencilmorph. I love this idea, though I'm not sure about its implications, which I want to think through here. Anthropomorphism #1 (traditional, & its extensions) The traditional definition of anthropomorphism is something like \"the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2010\/12\/lead-pencil-275x183.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7677,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/06\/21\/beatnik-brothers-in-parrhesia\/","url_meta":{"origin":1307,"position":4},"title":"“Beatnik Brothers” in Parrhesia","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 21, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The new issue of Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy\u00a0includes work by Quentin Meillassoux, Tristan Garcia, a review panel discussing\u00a0Katrin Pahl's Tropes of Transport: Hegel and Emotion, and a piece by me on the objects-processes debate in speculative realist philosophy. The latter, entitled \"Beatnik Brothers? Between Graham Harman and the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10471,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/04\/11\/process-relational-ecologies-querying-some-terms\/","url_meta":{"origin":1307,"position":5},"title":"Process-relational ecologies: querying some terms","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 11, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"It's wonderful to see that process-relational theory is getting noticed in the study of social-ecological systems. A new article in Ecology and Society, Garcia et al's \"Adopting process-relational perspectives to tackle the challenges of social-ecological systems research,\" argues that a process-relational perspective, \"which focuses on nonequilibrium dynamics and relations between\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/04\/paradigm-event.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/04\/paradigm-event.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/04\/paradigm-event.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/04\/paradigm-event.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}