Alfred North Whitehead

Teleology and the life sciences: between limit concept and ontological necessity.

by Barbara Muraca

paper should appear 2011
in: Koutroufinis, S. (ed.). Process and Life – Towards a Whiteheadian View of Living Beings, Frankfurt: Lancaster, Ontos

Ecology between natural science and environmental ethics. Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism and its contribution to an ecological worldview

by Barbara Muraca

in: Weber, M. (ed.): Handbook of Whiteheadien Process Thought. 2008 Frankfurt, Lancaster: Ontos.

The Map of Moral Significance: a new axiological matrix for environmental ethics

by Barbara Muraca

Environmental Values 20:3

One main issue within environmental ethics is the so-called Demarcation Problem, i.e. the question of which entities... more One main issue within environmental ethics is the so-called Demarcation Problem, i.e. the question of which entities are members of the moral community and hold intrinsic value. I argue that the demarcation problem relies mainly on Kantian moral philosophy. While the Kantian framework offers a strong and immediately deontological argument for moral agents holding inherent moral values, it presents problems when stretched beyond its original scope and lacks an adequate ground for addressing relational complexity and the moral significance of collectives. In this paper I outline an alternative axiological framework (‘map of moral significance’) that relies on a relational ontology and encompasses intrinsic and relational values as the two equipollent axes of a matrix in which to embed the question posited by the Demarcation Problem.

AN AESTHETIC REPRESENTATION OF ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD'S PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS EDUCATION

by Sencer Corlu

Archaeology and the Second Empiricism

by Christopher Witmore

Forthcoming In F. Herschend, C. Hillerdal and J. Siapkas (eds.) Archaeology into the 2010s.

A return to things themselves obliges one to return to matters fundamental to the nature of empiricism. In revisiting... more A return to things themselves obliges one to return to matters fundamental to the nature of empiricism. In revisiting aspects of the ordinary empiricism – where an ‘objective’ truth was seen to surpass the practices behind its formation – this paper sketches several propositions as to the shape and character of what might be called the ‘second empiricism’; an empiricism that does not discriminate against relations that do not involve human actors and which does not pretend to separate what we know from how we know.

They Only Saw the Surface of Things

by J.W. Trull

The Notion of Pantry: A Speculative Defense of Unuse

by Davide Panagia

World Journal 6

My title is less odd than it seems. The concerns expressed herein are born from reactions to recent practices of... more My title is less odd than it seems. The concerns expressed herein are born from reactions to recent practices of departmental “de-activation” amongst university campuses (SUNY-Albany, Penn State, & UNLV); from the downsizing of entire faculties in the name of interdisciplinarity due to supposed lack of student interest in classes (a place-holder term for not pulling one’s own weight with regard to student enrolment); and of decisions on the part of governments (both local and federal) to determine the nature of inquiry and, by implication, the nature of intellectual labour (as recent events in Wisconsin and Iowa have shown). The issue, in other words, regards intellectual survival in an age of austerity—and specifically the idea that speculative inquiry is a wrong that must be defended.

Part of what is at stake here is the polemical category of “wrong” itself, and the ease with which we are accustomed to synchronizing the category of wrong with that of the epistemic mistake. I want to propose something different; namely that wrong is a political category, not an epistemological one.1 And as a political category, it disposes spaces and temporalities that interrupt the conventions of correspondence which enable the circulation of value in contemporary political life. As a political category, wrong regards the rendering remarkable of a site of resistance that stands in excess to the prevailing practices of articulation and deliberation.

In contrast, the political economy of austerity (something that has a much more lucrative cultural politics and history than recent debates suggest) relies on the affect of duress in order to assign tort to excess. In universities, the result is not only the inevitable pressure to produce (both publications and Ph.D. students), but the even odder scenario that production must happen under duress: that education must struggle to produce in order to justify its existence against other unproductive expenditures like the health industry or the service industry. Nothing less than the administration of time, and one’s relationship to one’s own time, is what is at stake in the recent attacks on schooling.

The "New" Story of God: Job, Plato, and the Open View—A Review of The God Biographers

by T. C. Moore

A review of _The God Biographers_ by Larry Witham.

To Have or Not to Be: Possession of Action as Organizational Mode of Being

by Nicolas Bencherki

Bencherki, N., & Cooren, F. (2011). To have or not to be: the possessive constitution of organization. Human Relations, 64(12), 1579-1607.

How does an organization act? Can it be considered an actor on its own or does it need organizational members who act... more How does an organization act? Can it be considered an actor on its own or does it need organizational members who act on its behalf? We would like to suggest our own take on the issue by suggesting a genuinely communicative approach to the issue of organizational action. Using the narratology of A. J. Greimas to make apparent in talk some of process philosophy’s tenets, we show how organization act by being attributed actions. The detailed study of meetings from a community organization serves as our empirical grounding. We suggest that through the imbrication of mandates and programs of action in a logic of appropriation/attribution, the organization can effectively act while always relying on others to do so. Far from “just talk”, we contend that in doing so, participants reconfigure their organization and make it do things. There is no need to resort to an essentialist ontology of organization to state that it acts “itself”. We therefore reconcile the two most common views of organizational action – that of an organization acting by itself and that of agents acting on its behalf.

Urban Play: Imaginatively Responsible Behavior as an Alternative to Neoliberalism

by Fred Landers

(forthcoming), Arts in Psychotherapy. This draft submitted on June 7, 2011. Small edits made on October 15, 2011.

Urban Play is a budding form of social activism in which groups of friends engage in improvised play with each other... more Urban Play is a budding form of social activism in which groups of friends engage in improvised play with each other and with strangers in public places. This work may contribute to social justice by helping participants discover opportunities for change. If neoliberalism encourages the pursuit of narrowly defined self-interests, neoliberal institutions may be maintained by the fear that these interests are threatened. By allowing participants to define the actions that are uniquely possible among them, play appears to offer an alternative to neoliberalism. What has been learned so far from playing in public also suggests a fresh perspective on Developmental Transformations, the form of drama therapy that inspired Urban Play.

L'importance de l'importance : approches de la notion d'importance chez Whitehead

by Matthieu F. Girard

Kimball on Whitehead on Perception

by David Hildebrand

"Kimball on Whitehead on Perception." Process Studies 22:1 (Winter 1993) A response to Robert H. Kimball's... more "Kimball on Whitehead on Perception." Process Studies 22:1 (Winter 1993) A response to Robert H. Kimball's charge (which may be found here) that A. N. Whitehead's account of perception is incoherent. Kimball argued that Whitehead's account failed to reconcile two traditional theories of perception: phenomenological (sense-data) theory and causal (physiological) theory. I argue that Kimball's charge results from a misguided attempt to place Whitehead's theory within the parameters of a debate between two traditional theories. Instead, Whitehead supersedes that debate by offering-via the explanatory notions "perception in the mode of causal efficacy" and "perception in the mode of presentational immediacy"-a more comprehensive picture.

Religion and the Modern World: Towards a Naturalistic Panentheism

by Matthew David Segall

unpublished.

Responding to a debate between Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens on the value of religion, and offering a... more Responding to a debate between Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens on the value of religion, and offering a naturalistic account of divinity with the help of Alfred North Whitehead.

« L'aventure cosmo-théologique »

by Michel Weber

« L'aventure cosmo-théologique », François Beets ; Michel Dupuis ; Michel Weber (éditeurs), Alfred North Whitehead. De l’Algèbre universelle à la théologie naturelle. Actes des Journées d’étude internationales tenues à l’Université de Liège les 11-12-13 octobre 2001, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag, 2004, pp. 283-309.

« Concepts of Creation and Pragmatics of Creativity »

by Michel Weber

« Concepts of Creation and Pragmatics of Creativity », Wenyu Xie, Zhihe Wang, George Derfer (eds.), Whitehead and China, Frankfurt / Paris / Lancaster, ontos verlag, 2005, pp. 137-149.

« The Art of Epochal Change »

by Michel Weber

« The Art of Epochal Change », in Franz Riffert and Michel Weber (eds.), Searching for New Contrasts. Whiteheadian Contributions to Contemporary Challenges in Neurophysiology, Psychology, Psychotherapy and the Philosophy of Mind (Whitehead Psychology Nexus Studies I), Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 2003, pp. 252-281.

« Jean Wahl (1888–1974) »

by Michel Weber

« Jean Wahl (1888–1974) », in Michel Weber and William Desmond, Jr. (eds.), Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag, Process Thought X1 & X2, 2008, I, pp. 15-38, 395-414, 573-599 ; II, pp. 640-642

« Christiana Morgan (1897–1967) »

by Michel Weber

« Christiana Morgan (1897–1967) », in Michel Weber and William Desmond, Jr. (eds.), Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag, Process Thought X1 & X2, 2008, II, pp. 465-468

« Contact Made Vision: The Apocryphal Whitehead »

by Michel Weber

« Contact Made Vision: The Apocryphal Whitehead », in Michel Weber and William Desmond, Jr. (eds.), Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag, Process Thought X1 & X2, 2008, I, pp. 573-599

« Hypnosis: Panpsychism in Action »

by Michel Weber

« Hypnosis: Panpsychism in Action », in Michel Weber and William Desmond, Jr. (eds.), Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag, Process Thought X1 & X2, 2008, I, 395-414