Palgrave Perspectives on Process Philosophy – serie

This book provides a survey of key process-philosophical approaches that, in conversation with selected concepts across the biological and physical sciences, help us to think about living processes, or ‘lived time,’ at different scales of functioning. The first part is written from an opening perspective on the question of the differing scales of analysis provided by Alfred North Whitehead. In particular, his interest in questions arising from the quantum mechanical reconciliation with classical mechanics informs the first two chapters that address problematic categorizations of life as variously ‘despotic,’ ‘invasive,’ or as primitive (in the radically more-than-human case of micro-organisms), whose potential recategorization relies on our willingness to acknowledge changes in value depending on the scale at which we view them. The second part of the book concerns methodologies, in the light of works by Henri Bergson, whose intertwiningconcerns with epistemology and ontology in his theories of mind and life serve as a model for a process philosophy of biology. The chapters focus on techniques used across philosophy and the sciences to visualize processes that are otherwise unavailable to us due to the limitations of our perceptual faculties, no matter how sophisticated the tools for analysis, from microscopes to telescopes, have become. This book concludes with a consideration of the relations between parts and wholes in process, panpsychist, and ecological terms. It revisits the question of ecological balance and the place of human activities in relation to it, with reference to works of Charles Hartshorne and William James.

This book provides a survey of key process-philosophical approaches that, in conversation with selected concepts across the biological and physical sciences, help us to think about living processes, or ‘lived time,’ at different scales of functioning. The first part is written from an opening perspective on the question of the differing scales of analysis provided by Alfred North Whitehead. In particular, his interest in questions arising from the quantum mechanical reconciliation with classical mechanics informs the first two chapters that address problematic categorizations of life as variously ‘despotic,’ ‘invasive,’ or as primitive (in the radically more-than-human case of micro-organisms), whose potential recategorization relies on our willingness to acknowledge changes in value depending on the scale at which we view them. The second part of the book concerns methodologies, in the light of works by Henri Bergson, whose intertwiningconcerns with epistemology and ontology in his theories of mind and life serve as a model for a process philosophy of biology. The chapters focus on techniques used across philosophy and the sciences to visualize processes that are otherwise unavailable to us due to the limitations of our perceptual faculties, no matter how sophisticated the tools for analysis, from microscopes to telescopes, have become. This book concludes with a consideration of the relations between parts and wholes in process, panpsychist, and ecological terms. It revisits the question of ecological balance and the place of human activities in relation to it, with reference to works of Charles Hartshorne and William James.

This book newly articulates the international and interdisciplinary reach of Whitehead’s organic process cosmology for a variety of topics across science and philosophy, and in dialogue with a variety historical and contemporary voices. Integrating Whitehead’s thought with the insights of Bergson, James, Pierce, Merleau-Ponty, Descola, Fuchs, Hofmann, Grof and many others, contributors from around the world reveal the relevance of process philosophy to physics, cosmology, astrobiology, ecology, metaphysics, aesthetics, psychedelics, and religion. A global collection, this book expresses multivocal possibilities for the development of process cosmology after Whitehead.

This book newly articulates the international and interdisciplinary reach of Whitehead’s organic process cosmology for a variety of topics across science and philosophy, and in dialogue with a variety historical and contemporary voices. Integrating Whitehead’s thought with the insights of Bergson, James, Pierce, Merleau-Ponty, Descola, Fuchs, Hofmann, Grof and many others, contributors from around the world reveal the relevance of process philosophy to physics, cosmology, astrobiology, ecology, metaphysics, aesthetics, psychedelics, and religion. A global collection, this book expresses multivocal possibilities for the development of process cosmology after Whitehead.

This book has two main tasks: (1) to call attention to the special challenges presented by our experience of affect—all varieties of pleasure and pain—and (2) to show how these challenges can be overcome by an “enrichment approach” that understands affect as the enrichment or deterioration of conscious activity as a whole. This “enrichment approach” draws from Alfred North Whitehead as well as the pragmatists John Dewey and William James, all of whom thought of affect as a fundamental aspect of experience rather than a special class of feelings. It also draws from recent scientific research that suggests that the dynamic repertoire of consciousness can change, effectively expanding and contracting our capacity to feel. Weaving these perspectives together, the book develops a theory that accounts for the peculiar phenomenology of affect and sheds new light on a diverse range of experiences, from everyday pleasures and pains to the special satisfactions of the arts and religious festivity. At the same time, it presents a fresh and distinctively affect-centered perspective on the nature of consciousness.

This book has two main tasks: (1) to call attention to the special challenges presented by our experience of affect—all varieties of pleasure and pain—and (2) to show how these challenges can be overcome by an “enrichment approach” that understands affect as the enrichment or deterioration of conscious activity as a whole. This “enrichment approach” draws from Alfred North Whitehead as well as the pragmatists John Dewey and William James, all of whom thought of affect as a fundamental aspect of experience rather than a special class of feelings. It also draws from recent scientific research that suggests that the dynamic repertoire of consciousness can change, effectively expanding and contracting our capacity to feel. Weaving these perspectives together, the book develops a theory that accounts for the peculiar phenomenology of affect and sheds new light on a diverse range of experiences, from everyday pleasures and pains to the special satisfactions of the arts and religious festivity. At the same time, it presents a fresh and distinctively affect-centered perspective on the nature of consciousness.

This book provides the first full length treatment of the nature and function of freedom within the work of Henri Bergson. It does so while also introducing Bergson’s key ideas and major works. It explores Bergson through the lens of freedom, while at the same time showing how Bergson’s work might engage with current challenges. It does this by examining the four major works of Bergson, highlighting how freedom can be conceived in each text and how Bergson addresses key freedom problematics in those works. It offers a definition of freedom in Bergson as the “creation of the new within the flow of duration.” What emerges, is that freedom remains crucial for Bergson beyond the obvious treatment of freedom directly in Time and Free Will.Free will, memory, evolution, religion, and morality are major themes for Bergson. Moreover, there are particular freedom problematics concerning each of those themes that illustrate the central importance of freedom in Bergson. These include determinism, dualism, materialism, mechanism, finalism, and the notion of the open and closed.

This book provides the first full length treatment of the nature and function of freedom within the work of Henri Bergson. It does so while also introducing Bergson’s key ideas and major works. It explores Bergson through the lens of freedom, while at the same time showing how Bergson’s work might engage with current challenges. It does this by examining the four major works of Bergson, highlighting how freedom can be conceived in each text and how Bergson addresses key freedom problematics in those works. It offers a definition of freedom in Bergson as the “creation of the new within the flow of duration.” What emerges, is that freedom remains crucial for Bergson beyond the obvious treatment of freedom directly in Time and Free Will.Free will, memory, evolution, religion, and morality are major themes for Bergson. Moreover, there are particular freedom problematics concerning each of those themes that illustrate the central importance of freedom in Bergson. These include determinism, dualism, materialism, mechanism, finalism, and the notion of the open and closed.

This book takes a stand against and critiques readings of William James that do not pay attention to the metaphysics of experience. Such interpretations overlook the first mentions of radical empiricism in James’s Will to Believe argument. By attending to James's metaphysics of experience, this book argues that James’s universe is a “quasi-chaos” of becoming in our relations with nature and other people, so that things independent of us relate, evolve, and change in space and time. James’s metaphysics of relations is what unifies his various psychological, poetic, mystical, and religious commitments. These metaphysical implications have consequences for how James understood what metaphysics can do in philosophy, how it relates to theology, what we can say about his will-to-believe argument, mysticism, free-will, God’s finitism, the problem of One and the Many, and panpsychism.

This book takes a stand against and critiques readings of William James that do not pay attention to the metaphysics of experience. Such interpretations overlook the first mentions of radical empiricism in James’s Will to Believe argument. By attending to James's metaphysics of experience, this book argues that James’s universe is a “quasi-chaos” of becoming in our relations with nature and other people, so that things independent of us relate, evolve, and change in space and time. James’s metaphysics of relations is what unifies his various psychological, poetic, mystical, and religious commitments. These metaphysical implications have consequences for how James understood what metaphysics can do in philosophy, how it relates to theology, what we can say about his will-to-believe argument, mysticism, free-will, God’s finitism, the problem of One and the Many, and panpsychism.

This book demonstrates how the totalization of mechanistic materialism is inherent to global capitalism and how this totalization, coupled with techno-theism (the belief that technology will save us as a universal political project) and growth-mania (the belief in economic growth as a remedy to all socio-political issues), leads to the exhaustion of mind and nature. This book is an extensive examination of how the conceptualization of the relationship between thought and matter is at the core of philosophies of nature, philosophies of technology, and theories of political economy, and of the reasons why we must urgently rethink this relationship.  Kwapińska argues that we must dig deep into our intellectual habits to enable noo- and bio- diversity and resist the totalizing tendencies of global capitalism. The book calls for the diversification of methods in social sciences, and the incorporation of process perspectives, to deal with the fact that orthodox ontologies and methods have failed to predict and manage consecutive economic and socio-political crises.

This book offers a new understanding of naturalism and normativity by integrating them within a process metaphysics framework. Rejecting all forms of transcendence, Dionysis Christias advances a conception of ‘fractured immanence’ in which mind and nature are not ontologically distinct regions of being (they are both ways of being processes) yet diverge in the order of understanding, a tension enabling their ongoing self-correcting interplay as concepts without presupposing transcendence or complete mutual transparency. Drawing on Deleuze, Sellars and Peirce, the book replaces substance metaphysics with an anti-representational, univocal process ontology which throws light on core problems in contemporary analytic metaphysics of powers and emergence. Normativity is embedded in this naturalistic process framework by being understood as an emergent intensive regime whose function is hyperstitional: it stabilizes and projects ideal possible worlds expressed by unactualized universals, and performatively makes them actual over time by collectively treating them as real.

This book addresses aesthetics from a process philosophy perspective to highlight how even the perception of fixed objects, such as painting and drawing, depends on the intertwining and layering of a range of processes.Drawing on philosophers within the process tradition, the book argues that the visual arts and aesthetics need to directly address speed differentials in vision and the material medium.  In doing so, it rephrases questions in aesthetics – which often involve perduring objects, substances or even eternal ideas – in terms of durational differences.  From this perspective, aesthesis constitutes the confluence between visual finitude and the broader movements of material becoming.Visualising an Aesthetics of Process is essential reading for all scholars, researchers and advanced students of aesthetics and metaphysics.

This book articulates how African metaphysics (characterized by force) and process metaphysics (characterized by becoming) are similar on several fronts. On the one hand, the vitalist and relational characters of African metaphysics have engrossed researchers as unique and original to Africa, but they have yet to articulate where this leads – processism. On the other hand, the becoming or event underpinning of process metaphysics which has been the focus of Anglo-American processism, has not courted deserving academic attention, due chiefly to the influence wielded by substance metaphysics. This is the primary research gap which the present book magnifies, and then addresses, while contending for intellectual exchange(s) among specialists in processism, irrespective of the philosophic tradition. To accomplish this, this book admits intercultural philosophy for assessing the principal claims of some African and process philosophers and to bring them into a conversation, with an alternative system of logic in Ezumezu, to mediate thought, theory, and method. This effort assists in addressing the history of misrepresentation and distortion which process metaphysics, as an under-explored tradition, has suffered and endured.