The Process of Self-Knowledge

People are, in a sense, entities. We exist is a social construct—a culture—and we prehend each other in much the same way as actual entities do in Alfred North Whitehead’s work, Process and Reality. In the history of philosophy, the idea of self-knowledge has been a recurring theme. So one might ask, in what way can we think of the process of knowing one’s self as a process of prehending entities? I intend to demonstrate that the prehensions we have with the actual world continually define who and what we are becoming. We are never defined as a totality of being, as an existentialist once put it, but are in a continual process of becoming. And while this line of thought could be directed towards a discussion about the physical processes of how our bodies develop, it is my intention to discuss the development of the psyche—the so-called mental self or personality. I hope that by utilizing Whitehead’s terminology and thought along with modern phenomenological ideas about consciousness, I might better illuminate how it is we think what we think, and possibly why.

Our personality is, to a large degree, the concrescence of activities in the brain. Neural components cooperate, whether through design or chance, in such a way that a conscious awareness is created consisting of thoughts, opinions, feelings, dreams, aversions, etc. The language employed by Whitehead in his analysis of the process of prehension could be used to describe the developments of these thoughts, feelings, feelings, etc. The main difficulty in discussing the similarities between the two events is that while Whitehead keeps his analysis based on the simplest examples of how actual entities prehend, the process that I will be discussing here is significantly more complex. Thus, I will have to push the thoughts of Whitehead to more complex descriptions while trying to keep his essential thoughts intact. Whitehead describes the world as a “medium for transmission” of prehensions through nexūs in much the same way as a neurologist might describe the brain as a medium of transmission for thought-processes. Our awareness of ourselves, the world around us, and their interactions depends on these processes in two senses; one is that we need them in order to think about ourselves, the other has to do with understanding how the process works. It is important to first realize how the process works.

Thoughts are essentially actual entities or groups of actual entities (nexus), and participate in the same type of process as described by Whitehead. But by ‘thoughts’ I do not intend to mean only those conscious experiences of the verbal nature, but simple neural interactions within the network of the brain. The neuro-chemical interaction that creates a pattern of activity in the brain that forms the basis for all we experience and do as a living body is based on how the actual entity acts as the basis for the concrescence of the nexus. Thoughts and actual entities[1] are in a sense atomic (cf. PR 235), in that they are in a sense located in a time and space (especially in the case of the neuron). Actual entities have definite causes and definite effects. The causes are ‘feelings’ and their effects are ‘feelings’ as well. More generally, these feelings are a part of a complex event called prehension, which is how entities interact, transform, and evolve. At the same time, thoughts are not random firings of neurons; they also have causes and effects. Thoughts seem to smoothly develop from prior thoughts or direct conscious experiences in much the same way that actual entities are derived from prehensions from other actual entities—whether singularly or as part of a nexus. It will be understood that when I refer to thoughts I will mean those basic neural activities, and that they will also inter-changeably refer to actual entities.

Thoughts are interdependent with the actual world as well as the nexus of thoughts within the mind itself. Thoughts are subject to what Whitehead calls the ‘ontological principle’; “Everything in the actual world is referable to some actual entity” (PR 244), nothing comes from no-thing. Process philosophy, or as Whitehead calls it, Philosophy of organism, works under more complex rules than that of Hume’s philosophy, but does not repudiate Hume’s ‘impressions’ which can be utilized here to help us conceive of this process. Thoughts are ultimately dependent upon stimuli (‘physical feelings’) in order to be defined, much in the same way that the creation of a novel (or positively prehended) actual entity depends on feelings of other actual entities. These stimuli come from both physical senses (‘ simple physical feelings’) and from impressions from prior sensual experiences—much in the sense that Hume talked about with ‘impressions’ but which Whitehead calls ‘conceptual feelings’ (which are derived from ‘eternal objects’). And while this may appear dualistic, Whitehead conceives of it as interplay between the physical and mental poles. The mental is dependent upon the physical in much the same way that Aristotle says that we must begin with actual objects in order to create ideas to conceive of—there must be a chair before there is an idea of a chair. In much the same way, an actual entity must be prehended by the nexus of the mind in order to create a ‘conceptual feeling’—a concept—based on that actual entity of nexus of actual entities from the actual world. This idea will be dealt with in more detail below.

Consciousness is a result of this process as well in that it is dependent upon prehension to arise in the nexūs of the mind. In discussing perception Whitehead says:

But it is equally true to say that a simple physical feeling is the most primitive

type of an act of perception, devoid of consciousness. The actual entity which is

the initial datum is the actual entity perceived, the objective datum is the

‘perspective’ under which that actual entity is perceived, and the subject of the

simple physical feeling is the perceiver. (PR 236)

While it is true that at this point Whitehead is discussing perception “devoid of consciousness” he is quick to point out that the same principle is true when consciousness is acquired. Each moment of conscious awareness is itself an actual entity (insofar as the moment is a thought), but it is more like the result of the prehension-actual entity-prehension process itself, and Daniel Dennett seems to confirm.[2] Consciousness, I think Whitehead and Dennett would agree here, is a kind of after-event or result of the process here described. Consciousness is indeed a higher order of this process, but still is subject to the same process as simpler activities in the brain. Now that the process has become clear, we must understand how it all comes together to create our personality or psyche.

Our brain does not simply passively take in the world, but actively (once again, whether by design or by accident) interprets the world using the process of prehension. Perhaps the idea of the negative prehension is the most interesting idea concerning this discussion, considering that it is what ultimately is responsible for creativity and novelty in the world. If thoughts were just a re-hashing of old thoughts and actual entities in the actual world, then new ideas would never arise. “Apart from interference [from negative prehensions], the subjective form is a re-enaction of the subjective form of the feeling felt.” The subjective form is in a sense the feeling actualized for the actual entity; at the conscious level it could be the concept being thought. Using Whitehead’s terms, if all prehensions were ‘positive,’ then novelty would never effect the concrescence of the actual entity, and we would essentially have a universe full of actual entities cloning themselves, thoughts cloning thoughts. This idea of error creating novelty differs from philosophers such as Hume. For Hume, impressions could in essence be combined to create new ideas in the mind whereas for Whitehead, the major factor is not the combining of feelings from the nexus per se so much as it is the nature of the ‘negative prehension’ itself. Daniel Dennett, in his Consciousness Explained, talks about consciousness as having to deal with the constraints and pressures of time which force it to process events experienced in a way that essentially rewrites our experience for our conscious experience of those events (cf. Dennett 144-53). Either the event is rewritten prior to our awareness of it, or our memories of events are rewritten after the fact (cf. Dennett 119). To our later self, there is little difference to us.[3]

It may be that this ‘negative prehension’ that manifests itself on the level of the feeling during the creation of the actual entity may manifest itself—in a hierarchical domino effect—on a larger scale throughout a nexus (in this case a nexus of thoughts, or a ‘thought-nexus’). This seems to fit with what Whitehead calls ‘transmuted feelings.’ All feelings have an ‘objective datum’ from which they originate, and are a kind of process for transmission of information form one actual entity to another. In the case of the transmuted feeling, “the objective datum is a nexus of actual entities.” (PR 232) So if these feelings are dependent upon a nexus, or group of actual entities in the actual world, then it might be said to support the notion that an event, which is itself a kind of nexus in that it is a collection of actual occasions, can come together to create a transmuted feeling which will act as the stimulus for the conceptual feeling to become actualized in the entity of thought. This idea is based on the “Categorical Condition of ‘Transmutation’”, which is described thus; “Our usual way of consciously prehending the world is by these transmuted physical feelings” (PR 253) which is to say that what we experience consciously is essentially a concrescence of stimuli from events prehended through ‘physical feelings.’ The prehension can be positive or negative; if it is negative the prehension will ultimately change the actual entity into a thought that, while based on it, becomes novel and creative. Over time as more events are prehended negatively, the simple thought can integrate with other simple thoughts to create a novel thought-nexus; a more complex and, perhaps under certain conditions, conscious thought. Once the thought occurs in the mind, it can then go on to act as a prehending actual entity for further thoughts.

In being prehended by the mind—whether positively or negatively—the actual entity in the actual world will simultaneously effect the nexus of the mind as well as the thought created due to this prehension. This is a point that was not discussed explicitly in Process and Reality, but I believe is implied in the theory of prehensions. When stimuli come into the brain for processing into thought, it will not simply be positively prehended, but will encounter negative prehension that will transform the nexus according to the nature of the nexus. And while the positive prehension will change the nexus in a quantitative sense—it will add something to it—the negative prehension has the potential to create a thought that is truly novel to the actual world of the mind, thus it can spur growth and change. The nexus is a group of actual entities that is constantly prehending itself, and any new incoming feelings from the actual world will effect the next concrescence of the thought-nexus. The point is that the nexus feels the actual entity being prehended in much the same way that a filter or lens will effect some substance coming through it—however not so simply as this. Thus, because the prehension of the actual entity from the actual world changes the thought-nexus, the new thought-nexus will include the new actual entity. Also, the process will ultimately change the ‘subjective form’ of the actual entity prehended due to its relation with the thought-nexus. Thus, the actual entity both effects the thought-nexus while re-creating itself in the mind, but not necessarily positively.

The preceding seems to demonstrate that the thoughts we have are ultimately derived from experience. As feelings are prehended in the mind the complex ideas formed could be identified with what Whitehead calls the ‘mental pole’ whereas the physical feeling—the objective datum for the novel thought—would be derived from the actual entity in the actual world prehended by the mind. This is Whitehead’s Categorical Condition IV: ‘Conceptual Valuation.’ With this, says Whitehead, a sensitive experience originates mental operations (cf. PR 248). The conceptual feeling, which is the manifestation of the mental pole, is ultimately derives from ‘eternal objects. These eternal objects are similar to what Plato called “forms,” but seem to differ in that, while also unchanging, they are ultimately derived from experience with actual entities in the actual world, which seems to rely on Aristotle more than Plato despite Whitehead’s self-declared Platonism. Like with Kant, there are categories in the mind for dealing with the objective datum of the actual world inherent in the nature of the mind (they are the prehensions that make up the thought-nexūs). But the eternal object cannot be participated in a priori, but must develop from the physical pole to the mental pole. It is like saying that the nature of prehension is the very structure of the brain itself (and perhaps in reality) and contains processes that allow these conceptual thoughts to be formed almost in archetypal fashion, based on what it prehends from the actual world.

The psyche is the result of the concrescence of thought-nexūs, and is an ‘enduring object’ because it “sustains a character” among the members of the nexūs (PR 35). While negative prehensions do act as an agent of change or novelty, prehensions will still tend towards similar transmissions from one thought to another and creating a stream of thought rather than a chaotic sequence of thoughts. Not even the negative prehension in its error of transmission will change the actual entity so much that there is no recognizable relationship. As prehension continues throughout the network of the neural pathways and over time, a pattern of thought-nexūs will eventually form. Thought-nexūs will take on habitual behavior patterns based on the particular experience of the thought-nexus. That is to say that the many thought-nexūs will integrate into a personality or even an awareness[4] at the highest level of this hierarchy of nexūs. The thought-nexūs that constitute the psyche, therefore, seem not to be centralized in the same way that a processor does with a computer, or with the model of consciousness that Dennett refers to as the “Cartesian Theater.”[5] This is significant because it demonstrates the complex nature of the psyche, and therefore the complex nature of the personality. Thus it seems, to know ourselves, we have to dig through the possibility that what we are conscious of might be the result of multiple thought-nexūs coming together into a concrescence of awareness. This pattern is the enduring object—the personality or one of the constitutive parts of the personality. It endures because the established thought-nexūs will act as a stronger lens for incoming actual entities, and shift all prehended events slightly towards the nature of the thought-nexūs doing the prehending. In a sense, it is a self-perpetuating psyche, but only so far as positive prehension is concerned. As stated before, interference from negative prehension is what introduces novelty and creation.

There is an early stage of the development of psyche-nexus as well as the many thought-nexūs that constitute this psyche. But early on in the development of a nexus, the pattern that will act as this lens will not have been formed yet, or not with as much complexity as it will have later. Thus, there is an early stage of the development of the nexus that will be subject to influences from the actual world. This will be referred to as the formative stage of the thought-nexūs and, therefore, the psyche. The nexus is formed over time by having actual entities prehended into itself, essentially having it grow in complexity and size. Thus, it is like building a machine of some sort; the parts used and the configuration will determine what the machine will do. In the same way, the actual entities prehended—the experiences had by the thought-nexus in its formative stage—will determine the constitution of the nexus, and influence how that nexūs of the psyche will form and function in the future. Thus it seems that the social element of ‘nurture’, particularly the idea that our early formative years, is confirmed in terms of the phenomenology of mind in concrescence with the thought of Whitehead.

All of this leads to the conclusion that Whitehead’s theory of prehensions helps describe how the mind works to understand the actual world around us. As I stated in the beginning of this paper, the prehensions we have with the actual world continually define who and what we are becoming. The very unit of mental activity, thought (whether it be subconscious, unconscious, or conscious), can be compared to an actual entity. The actual entities come together in nexūs of mental activities that help define how further thoughts will develop, creating a pattern of thought that helps determine the nature of the personality, manifesting in behavior. But of course this treatment is limited to the development of the self (psychologically) in particular, but the analysis is not limited to that. As is obvious from Whitehead, this theory of prehensions is applicable to all levels of reality. Thus, it seems that there is some truth to saying that to understand the world, it is best to start by understanding the self.

[1] Perhaps the equivalent term ‘actual occasion’ would be more suited to this comparison, as the firing of a neuron is more easily conceived as an occasion than an entity.

[2] Cf. Dennett, Daniel C., Consciousness Explained. Little, Brown and Company Press, New York. 1991, p. 166

[3] How this relates to Whitehead’s thought may not be initially clear, but it is relevant to the discussion at hand. For now, it is best to keep in mind that the mind is not merely prehending one actual entity or nexus at a time, but is dealing with a large amount of data that needs to be processed, which will create problems when the data may in some way conflict with other data in a temporal and/or spatial manner.

[4] As for the consequences for how this effects what consciousness is, I will simply refer to Dennett’s work as it is not particularly relevant nor important to this discussion.