January 13th, 2010: Alfred North Whiteheads Speculative Philosophy

January 2010

The Nature of Utopia

Alfred North Whiteheads Speculative Philosophy

Speculative Philosophy is the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can interpreted.

Alfred North Whitehead, 1927¹⁾

The Utopian Adventure: Being God Almighty

The ideas laid out on my website are not intended to help understand the world but to construct a perfect world in our minds. I cannot follow any religion that preaches Creation to be anywhere near perfection. It seems far from it. Nor do I want to follow the systems of the Far East that declare the earthly world to be irrelevant to final redemption. I rather assume that we, endowed with a searching and longing spirit, are here to create a meaningful world. However, that our mindes are inherently capable of the task is a hope, not a certainty.

How to set about the task of creating a perfect and meaningful world? To start with, I allow myself unlimited freedom in thinking up a new world. My world may contain solid particles or only immaterial force fields. It may be colourless or fanciful. I may be the only inhabitant or there may be millions of fellows. Or there may not be a world at all. I start from nothing and only add what I want. I can finish when I have succeeded in thinking up a world into which I would move forever without a return ticket to this one.

Omnipotence Restricted by Logic

In allowing myself to think almighty, I want to honour at least one restriction: logic. Over the centuries, theologians have discussed various concepts of omnipotence, as attributed to a putative God. Two main schools of thought can be distinguished. One saying that God cannot bring about things that are logically impossible with the other school saying that even that is within divine omnipotence.²⁾ One point in case is whether God can make a stone that is too heavy for him to lift. Either he can or he can't. In both cases he would not be almighty. The latter school of theologians argues that God possibilities are beyond our understanding and that therefore he may be able to escape the paradox. Be that as it may, it seems to be impossible for us to find out at the moment. Likewise, we may assume that our intellects grow and that what may seem logically impossible today may one day be obviously possible.

Any practical endeavour, even one to build a final Utopian state, must follow a realistic line of advance. What could be gained by questioning all our reasoning by referring to a possible breakthrough into a new logic? While we must include that event in our speculations about the future, we do well to use the best tool of thought that we have and that is logic. If we force logic to its limits, we may even get an inkling of where a breakthrought may or should occur. But nevertheless, as long as we have no better mode of thought, logic must suffice.³⁾

Logic Alone is Infertile

Logic alone, however, can never produce anything. Logical reasoning always needs premisses and assumptions from which it can proceed to conclusions. The rules of logic can state whether a number of statements are compatible. For example, if we can assume that all birds have wings. We also assume that all parrots are birds. The conclusion that all parrots have wings is logically necessary. A parrot without wings could never exist if the two premisses are right. But logical reasoning can never verify or falsify the premisses.

But where then do we get the premisses from which we can think up a perfect world? These can only be found within our souls. It is the aim of this project to first observe the stream of consciousness in myself. Then must be extracted desires that should serve a premisses for the construction of a perfect cosmos. The final world, however, must stick to logic. It is here where Alfred North Whiteheads method of speculative philosophy provides useful criteria.

Whiteheads ideas of Coherence and Adequacy

Whitehead characterises his method of speculative philosophy as follows:

"Speculative Philosophy is the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can interpreted."

Whitehead characterises coherence as follows: "Coherence, as here employed, means that the fundamental ideas, in terms of which the scheme is developed, presuppose each other so that in isolation they are meaningess. This requirement does not mean that they are definable in terms of each other; it means that what is indefinable in one such notion cannot be abstracted from its relevance to the other notions. It is the ideal of speculative philosophy that its fundamental notions shall not seem capable of abstraction from each other. In other words, it is presupposed that no entity can be conceived in complete abstraction from the system of the universe, and that it is the business of speculative philosophy to exhibit this truth. This character is its coherence."

Whiteheads definition of speculative philosophy closes with the idea of an interpretation of all the elements of our experience. He specifies interpretation as follows: "By this notion of 'interpretation' I mean that every thing of which we are conscious, as enjoyed, perceived, willed, or thought, shall have the character of a particular instance of the general scheme. Thus the philosophical scheme should be coherent, logical, and, in respect to its interpretation, applicable and adequate. Here 'applicable' means that some items of experience are thus interpretable, and 'adequate' means that there are not items incapable of such interpretation."

Whitehead assumes that there is a binding idea to all our experiences, which he calls essence: "This doctrine of necessity in universality means that there is an essence to the universe which forbids relationships beyond itself, as a violation of its rationality. Speculative philosophy seeks to find that essence.

Relevance to Utopian Thinking

Whiteheads concept of speculative philosophy provides a framework for the construction of systems of thought that is, for the blue print of possibly new worlds as well. Its charme lies in the idea of one essence to which all aspects of the world must bear some relevance. Wheras Whitehead may have assumed that essence to be discernible in the outward world, I first want to analyze my desires and wishes and seek an essence therein. That may be termed the essence of my soul. And from that essence of my soul I would then try to construct a world around it. Thus the primary source of the endeavour would be a direct apprecation of first-hand-experiences of wishes in the stream of consciousness. But rather than assemble them together and postulate a world to accomodate them all, I would first try to find an essence in the wishes and imagine a universe to reflect that essence.

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References and Footnotes

1) Whitehead, Alfred North: Process and Reality. Clifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927-1928
2) Wierenga, Edward R.: The Nature of God. An Inquiry into Divine Attributes. Cornell University Press, 1989
3) Modes of thought that might be seen as to compete with logic are, for example, medieval mysticism (Christian and Muslim), Far Eastern meditation and, finally, the search for Platonic ideas.