Section 55 (last updated 02.27.2021)
Perceptual object, whitehead-,
Whitehead- ch.viii- summery
(Add to above nature is arrangement, and the change in that arrangement determines when a potential event is the present moment)
According to whitehead, objects are not only the ordinary ones we see. there are different kinds of objects, for example, some are perceptual objects, I.e., the objects we see and feel, but other objects are what he calls “scientific” objects which are abstract objects for the intellectual faculty to grasp and study.
(Add to point like particle) When whitehead talks of objects for faculties like sense and perception, I.e, sense objects, the presupposition for an object to be limited to a faculty like sensation means that the faculty itself defines what is taken for it as an object, specifically an object is an event. We have to be careful here not to conflate this idea with resorting to absolute subjectivism wherein the objects are merely a product from the mind of the individual. What is meant by the idea that mental facilities define the objects moreover means that the object is made for an observer, which is an altogether different claim then the observer producing the object. The idea that objects are events for sensible faculties is a literal application of the indivisible relation of the observer from the phenomena.
“In discussing the relations of situation in particular and of ingression in general the first requisite is to note that objects are of radically different types”
“It is necessary therefore in discussing them to determine what types of objects are under consideration. There are I think an indefinite number of types of objects. Happily we need not to think of them all.” (12:40)
An object for whitehead is defined purely from the conception it is derived from describing both the origin of its generation and the means by which it is maintained as an identity. The coming into existence is equated with the entering into a reference frame, defines the ingression of an object. The passage of nature is not merely space in which objects move within or time which is the determining movement of the objects, but rather both these primary principle of nature fundamentally conceived factors of nature. There are two interplays of conception; first there are a set of occurrences happening for an observer, second, the observer is also an object happening in a set of occurrences.
The conception is the passage of nature for events including space and time are objects for the observer.
(Add Descartes definition of situation) The idea of situation has its importance in the following three types of objects: “sense objects”, “perceptual objects”, and “scientific objects”. These three types form an ascending hierarchy of which each member presupposes the one below. Sense objects form the “base of the hierarchy” but not in terms of being the most fundamental because the objects of sense awareness (i) does not share in the passage of nature and (ii) is not a relation between other factors of nature.
Sense objects are where a conception reaches a limit, where a conception is situated, . Sense awareness is more fundamental than any of the particular senses like perception, touch etc. Because it is the capacity that allows for a part of an event to stand out as an object and be the subject for a sensible faculty. When perception for example conceives a set of objects situated in an event, it points out particular objects over other ones, and it is this ability that is the fundamental function of recognition, concerns how an object can be distinct and clear for perception and not any other object around it in that situation. Why can I look at a pole for example and have only that object be the centre of my attention and not any other object in the foreground? Why is there an alternation between which objects occupy the centre of attention?
Situation is where an object is situated in, not merely in position but in terms of dimension. The dimension of the object is determined by where it is situated within the conception. We are here maintaining that every object has implicit within it a reference frame in which the physical contents of the object is moulded over. The situation of an object concerns the way the physical quantities take on the form of abstract qualities. Abstract qualities stem from the idea set up as a hypothesis to be proven by the physical process of generating in and corrupting out of being. The advance between these two endpoints constitutes the life of a conception.
“But it is always a relatum and never the relation itself. Examples of sense-objects are a particular sort of colour, say Cambridge blue, or a particular sort of sound, or a particular sort of smell, or a particular sort of feeling. I am not talking of a particular patch of blue as seen during a particular second of time at a definite date. Such a patch is an event where Cambridge blue is situated. Similarly I am not talking of any particular concert-room as filled with the note. I mean the note itself and not the patch of volume filled by the sound for a tenth of a second. It is natural for us to think of the note in itself, but in the case of colour we are apt to think of it merely as a property of the patch” (p.149)
“The difficulties which cluster around the relation of situation arise from the obstinate refusal of philosophers to take seriously the ultimate fact of multiple relations. By a multiple relation I mean a relation which in any concrete instance of its occurrence necessarily involves more than two relata. For example, when John likes Thomas there are only two relata, John and Thomas. But when John gives that book to Thomas there are three relata, John, that book, and Thomas..”
19:50
Whitehead categorizes events “into four classes which overlap and are not very clearly separated. These classes are (i) the percipient events, (ii) the situations, (iii) the active conditioning events, (iv) the passive conditioning events.” (P.152)
“The percipient event is the relevant bodily state of the observer”, in a human for example it is flesh, in an electron it is electromagnetic energy. The situation is where something is conceived and acts as the environment, “where he sees the blue, say, behind the mirror.”
“The active conditioning events are the events whose characters are particularly relevant for the event (which is the situation) to be the situation for that percipient event, namely the coat, the mirror, and the state of the room as to light and atmosphere.”
“The passive conditioning events are the events of the rest of nature.” like scientific or abstract objects, potential objects.
Situation is related to where an object is situated in its event, an object through a mirror
P.153
“All we know of the characters of the events of nature is based on the analysis of the relations of situations to percipient events. If situations were not in general active conditions, this analysis would tell us nothing. Nature would be an unfathomable enigma to us and there could be no science. Accordingly the incipient discontent when a situation is found to be a passive condition is in a sense justifiable; because if that sort of thing went on too often, the rôle of the intellect would be ended.”
The percipient and situation constitute the relation between active and passive conditioning events. The percipient discloses the passive conditioning events, but the percipient which is in the situation disclosed by it is an active conditioning object, an object that is in and of itself that things passively happen to it.
“In general the situation is an active conditioning event; namely the coat itself, when there is no mirror or other such contrivance to produce abnormal effects. But the example of the mirror shows us that the situation may be one of the passive conditioning events. We are then apt to say that our senses have been cheated, because we demand as a right that the situation should be an active condition in the ingression.” (P. 153)
The percipient is indivisible from the general active conditioning event. The active conditioning event is the feature that makes the situation an object in and of itself, its self determination. The active conditioning event becomes a passive conditioning event when conceived through the perspective of another object in its relation, like a mirror or a sense awareness.
(Add to perception is more abstract find)
The relation of sense-objects and perceptual objects.
We automatically think that perceptual objects are subordinate to sense objects because perception is one kind of sensation, but in the scope of nature as a developing ingression, perceptual objects constitute a more abstract feel than sensible objects, yet more concrete and nuance.
“It is a law of nature that in general the situation of a sense-object is not only the situation of that sense-object for one definite percipient event, but is the situation of a variety of sense-objects for a variety of percipient events. For example, for any one percipient event, the situation of a sense-object of sight is apt also to be the situations of sense-objects of sight, of touch, of smell, and of sound.” (P.154)
In purely physical terms every object has corespondent void, or the first point of view from any object occupying space in time is classified as percipient event. Geometrically speaking the percipient event is defined by the fact that “the center of sphere is any point in its circumference”. The percipient event is the conception occupying a body and from that viewpoint acts as the point which every other points correlates with as reference point. A body characterizes a point from which consciousness originates as a conception.
“Furthermore this concurrence in the situations of sense-objects has led to the body—i.e. the percipient event—so adapting itself that the perception of one sense-object in a certain situation leads to a subconscious sense-awareness of other sense-objects in the same situation. This interplay is especially the case between touch and sight. There is a certain correlation between the ingressions of sense-objects of touch and sense-objects of sight into nature, and in a slighter degree between the ingressions of other pairs of sense-objects. I call this sort of correlation the ‘conveyance’ of one sense-object by another. When you see the blue flannel coat you subconsciously feel yourself wearing it or otherwise touching it. If you are a smoker, you may also subconsciously be aware of the faint aroma of tobacco.”
Whitehead explains the fact that a body is the point of correlating relations, with the example that even purely seeing something without touching it or smelling it still in the subconscious triggers memory sense awareness of the other associated senses.
“The perceptual object is not primarily the issue of a judgment. It is a factor of nature directly posited in sense-awareness. The element of judgment comes in when we proceed to classify the particular perceptual object. For example, we say, That is flannel, and we think of the properties of flannel and the uses of athletes’ coats. But that all takes place after we have got hold of the perceptual object.”
((Add find apperception Kant ) Perception in this context is not only limited to sight
Perceptual objects exists before judgment from the understanding.
“A perceptual object is a physical object when (i) its situation is an active conditioning event for the ingression of any of its component sense-objects, and (ii) the same event can be the situation of the perceptual object for an indefinite number of possible percipient events. Physical objects are the ordinary objects which we perceive when our senses are not cheated, such as chairs, tables and trees. In a way physical objects have more insistent perceptive power than sense-objects. Attention to the fact of their occurrence in nature is the first condition for the survival of complex living organisms.”
(Add to bugs with many eyes section) Whitehead defines “physical” objects first, as having the active conditioning properties to stimulate sense responses means that because objects have an innate capacity to stimulate sense response is what result in the development of organisms having sense organs. The development of any complex organism with sentiment capabilities is a direct result of objects having innate perceptive tendencies. The sense organs themselves have corresponding physical structures like the objects they perceive. It is difficult to say that whether organism are extensions of objects or the other way around because then the meaning of “organisms” becomes limited to biological life. The second point concerns how objects are universal for the varying conceptions of percipients. If we say the sense organs are a result from the objects and not the other way around but the sense organs belong to an organism they are distinguishable from. An organism is the relation between object and sense organ. The term “organism” defines a set of relations sustaining a specific function. (Add you smell something but do not see it)
“The result of this high perceptive power of physical objects is the scholastic philosophy of nature which looks on the sense-objects as mere attributes of the physical objects. This scholastic point of view is directly contradicted by the wealth of sense-objects which enter into our experience as situated in events without any connexion with physical objects. For example, stray smells, sounds, colours and more subtle nameless sense-objects. There is no perception of physical objects without perception of sense-objects. But the converse does not hold: namely, there is abundant perception of sense-objects unaccompanied by any perception of physical objects. This lack of reciprocity in the relations between sense-objects and physical objects is fatal to the scholastic natural philosophy.” (156)
The interesting point is the “lack of reciprocity in the relations between sense-objects and physical objects”. Physical objects follow from the perception of their sensible qualities, but the sensible qualities do not necessarily follow from any given object because they can be found across many objects, for example, if a certain object stops being red, the sensible quality of red still exists in another object that is within perception. Physical objects come and go within perception but their shared qualities remain. Now of course sensible qualities also change and the physical object appear to endure as Aristotle makes the definition of matter as an enduring substratum, the same flower remains but its colours change. However the feature of matter that is the enduring substratum is the conceiving quality, whitehead makes it recognition.
“Objects are elements in nature which do not pass. The awareness of an object as some factor not sharing in the passage of nature is what I call ‘recognition.’ […] Recognition is an awareness of sameness. But to call recognition an awareness of sameness implies an intellectual act of comparison accompanied with judgment […] Probably ‘sense-recognition’ would be a better term for what I mean by ‘recognition.’ […] I am quite willing to believe that recognition, in my sense of the term, is merely an ideal limit, and that there is in fact no recognition without intellectual accompaniments of comparison and judgment. But recognition is that relation of the mind to nature which provides the material for the intellectual activity.”
Sense-recognition is the “stillness” or indifference of conception for “sameness”. The experience of objects is what passes not the objects themselves.
(Add vacuum)
(Add after spacetime is everything)
The senses derive from the convoluted infinite flux of all possible events in time forming the spacetime manifold, a particular and limited picture.
This is demonstrated perfectly in the neurological affect of how any single one of the senses on their own process information from external reality versus how the mind synthesizes the information derived through from each sense to produce a high resolution conception of reality.
The brain turns that image upside down, filters out the veins and nerves from the eye organ and integrates all the other senses into that perception, sound, feeling, smell, taste that add resolution to each aspect of what is being perceived, certain colours develop textures, and this is the final picture of the world we ordinarily see.
The sense organs are called in modern philosophy the faculties of “judgment” because they compile from the set of infinite qualities that make up reality a specific aesthetical order, they choose which qualities over other qualities to conceive. In fact, human sensation only picks out a limited arrays of qualities that belong to the world and is ignorant to many others like ultraviolet radiation or ultrasonic waves.
The mind begins as an ideologue, with a set of ideas about what the world is, an organic worldview, and the entire infinite possibilities of the world became limited to that worldview, then the organs of perception along with the entire organism specimen develop to experience the world in that way. A fish hypothesizes that it can derive oxygen from H2O, and so it develops the necessary respiratory system to breath under water, gills. The realization itself at the same time manifest as the physical means for its actualization. But if every idea instantaneously manifest as its physical component, then where is the idea of development in this notion? Development is found in the complexity of what can be rationally conceived. I can conceives H2O in water, but water is also part of land, and vapour, and a multitude of other qualities which the mind has to adapt to and formulate a conception of.
(Add to solid liquid gas)
The nature of the physical interaction between objects depends on the nature of their form as part of a hierarchy of foundation. For example, a solid object falling down from the sky will go through the clouds and impact with the ground. But if the object was lighter and a gas, it would not reach the ground but stop at the clouds, for a gas object, other gas objects form a solid basis, therefore they localize within the same area. An object will interact with other objects of difference according to their state of matter.
The state of matter is determined by which dimension an object is in, the dimensions being itself the principle by which objects interact. An object with a minute atomic substructure will break through what we consider as solid. What it means to be solid at one level of magnitude will be more abstract at another level of analysis. Certain compounds or atoms for example are solid in more fundamental terms and therefore more or less solid than solid object of macro organic compounds. Electron for example takes on electromagnetic structure penetrates any objects at the macro-scale we consider solid including liquid and gases.
(Lizard walking on water, this breaks our understanding of water as a liquid, but this physicality of water conforms to the lizard because for it, water is more of a solid event rather than liquid. And so this becomes objective to our view that water for a lizard is more solid than liquid it is for us.
Adapting to the environment is conceiving it
When we say that consciousness is everything this must be taken literally not only in the sense that it is the substrate whereby all things are contained but also that it is literally in every difference.
One misguided influence on the development of evolution on to the sciences is that it placed them chronically in their ontological merit, that physics is more fundamental than chemistry and that more fundamental than biology brings with it one essential problem of not seeing ontological significance of their principles. Each science is structured on first principles that are equally fundamental in conceiving the different forms of being. That physics is more fundamental than chemistry and biology captures their relation. For example, that life is particular structuring of chemical compounds misses the mark on how life is universal in the substance of matter? Similarly that chemical bonds are forms of the relations of physics does not tell us how space and time are organically light. And physical principles like space and time being inherently chemical is the basic molecular compound of the cell.
In the very nature of cells is their inherent consciousness, which is the relation between the physical and the chemical, that the latter being the activity and the former the matter, constitutes the synthesis that is the cells.
In every cell there is their inherent observer. Every object of matter possess the conception, which is the consciousness, the biological in relation the chemical maintains the physical. These are the causes of each other.
Every object of perception is maintained as such for observation because of the inherent conscious element in it. Every object of perception has corresponding consciousness. Every material environment possess an invariably observing consciousness. In the cell, the compound and in the compound physics is but the very form, the relation between them where the distinct object involves consciousness. We are observing the conception of some life form. Looking at the ground and the sky above are conceptions maintained by their inherent life. Life is a universal principle is true as much as space and time are because space and time are themselves atoms, which are also compounds and compounds are cells. Perception of an object is is the conception of something else’s consciousness of it.
This prompts an evolutionary question that if life forms, such as cells, are constantly generating and perishing away, how can this flux maintain a stability such as a material object. How can the constant change in the consciousness of an object maintain the object as a particular thing. Because consciousness is relation, there has to be a contradiction between the variables of it and an agreements. Contradiction infinity, agreement indivisibility. (Add this to everywhere divisible and divisibly everywhere)
The cell is the relation where the compound is the physics, physics is the relation where the compound is the cell, and the compound is the relation where the cell is physics. The cell moves around in the compound. The compound structures the cell, and the cell necessitates the environment.
That the space and time, the physics of an object form is conceived by cell, means that the cell is conceived by the compound of the physics.
The cell of the germ maintains the physics as compound, and the compound maintains the cell as physics, and physics maintains the cell as compound.
(Add to environment/organism)
(Add to eye)
Congruency- all the pieces fall into the same place
The idea of congruency is a theory of simultaneity of what it means for something to happen concerning the general notion of time. This passage of nature is the conception. A thing comes into being, or rather an event happens, when a certain set of variables fall into place in relation to each other in a specific manner such that a distinct and new particular whole comes into presence. The alignment of distinct variables into a certain place forms a specific conception, or they are for that conception the intricate complexities forming the event.
For example, a virus is a living organism does not have desire so it does not seek its prey like a mammal would hunt his. So how does it access the immunology of its host. It relies on congruency. A virus relies on its host walking into it. That in the first place it is already in some bacteria host, this bacteria host is already in some bigger host like a mammal, and it is reproducing itself in those hosts, by transmission, let’s say in the form of an airborne droplet, it hovers in the air for a certain period of time, on the presupposition that’s some host will simply walk into it. The virus in some level hovers in the air, and from its own point of view, it simply finds itself in an immune system. This is due to the fact of congruency, the host is infected simply because a series set of variables aligned to make a specific event, like someone with the virus coughs, that cough spreads on the air as droplets containing the virus, and it so happen, that another person walking excalty in that place where the droplets hovered in the air, and just enough time the droplets slipped through some minor cracks in the cellular membrane in the navel, and these micro cracks are due to their smoking habits or something alike, and the virus was able to relocate itself in the cell, eventually spreading to the lungs, and the person finds himself in the event of pneumonia. A certain set of variables have to meet each other at the exact same time at the exact same place.
Depending on size determines physicality
Water from our magnitude is more liquid, however if we change the magnitude to a smaller degree, the same level of ants, water turns more solid, or rather more plasma like.
water from the point of view of an ant, from the size in which it is at, appears to be more solidified, or water at smaller droplets appears more solid as opposed to when there are large bodies of water as in an ocean where it appears very fluid. The reason for this is because time is different at these two magnitudes of space so that it takes longer for water at a smaller level to be fluid, I.e, such that a droplet does not just automatically disperse into a puddle for an ant, it maintains its shape for a while until it is broken down. Whereas we never see a droplet the size of a lake or an ocean because a mass of water that size would automatically be dispersed into a wavelength. without Gravity however any large mass of water would maintain a particle like state, I.e., more of a harder state than a fluid.
And if we even go more microscopic, the compounds forming liquids are solid. Likewise if we zoom into gas, we find liquid, vapour molecules, and if we zoom into solid we find it’s compound more gases, powder like. The smaller a liquid gets the more solid it becomes, the smaller a gas gets the more liquid it becomes, and the smaller a solid gets the more gases it becomes.
Contact
In ordinary experience objects interact by contact, things move by coming into contact with each other. As we span out into space, the distances between objects becomes greater and physical contact is rare. However the more we span out into space and now a more extensive image of the universe, we start to notice again that things are in contact again, galaxies form clusters
As we zoom out of space, the distance between stars decreases, but as we zoom in the space between the stars increases. While
if you zoom into something, more things are moving further away from you as you try to get closer and closer to all things. The farther you go further out, the more things seem to come closer together, because you are suppose to be going further away from everything, while the closer you come to them, the further away they are moving from you as the reference frame.
The strange face is that from earth, the distance between the earth and the sun is said to factually be about 148 million km. This measurement is in terms of “astronomical unit” is a unit of length, roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun is equal to about 150 million kilometres.
The distance between the earth and the sun is used as the standard for an astronomical unit because it is a measure based on using the distance between one centre to a different centre as the determining length for the distances between any objects in the universe. Earth is one centre where the measure is derived from, and that is connected with another centre, the sun, which is what all the bodies in the Milky Way galaxy revolve around.
Astronomical unit
The distance from one centre to the other, between earth and sun, forms a radius that can measure the distance between any bodies on the circumference relative to those centres. If we step out of astronomical unit of measure, makes space now immeasurable, there is no means of measuring space, so that lengths become hypothetical rather than real distances between stars. For example, if someone would be looking at the relation between earth and sun from the galaxy of andromeda, there distance appears minute, and the astronomical unit of measured unit would be the place of the observer, being somewhere in andromeda, in relation to the sun, to calculate the earth, which can give the same measure of distance between earth and sun, yet the perspective changes.
Distance is measured by time because it is measured by the speed it takes from one location to the other, kilometres, or kilo for weight, and meter in length, the length the distance from the top to the bottom of a single object as opposed to the distance between where that object is in relation a different object. Kilometres is the rate at which the length of an object changes position in space. the time it takes to get from andromeda to the Milky Way where the sun and earth rest, changes the distance between them.
The point is that our perception of space is confusing because standing from earth the space between stars is calculated to be massive, however from a more general perspective, stars form clusters that make galaxies appear like single bodies which are just collection of other bodies. It is no different if we zoom into our skin particles and after a certain level of magnification the space between molecules appears massive. There is always distance between objects yet each single object involves the intimate contact between other objects.
Spatially speaking it is impossible to move something without contact. However contact is just two things approaching each other resulting in a limit. if we introduce the element of time into the spatial domain, then it becomes very clear how events having vast distances can effect each other. It is ordinary to think that a crime I did years ago affects my present years later or how a future interview has the affect of making me anxious at the present. In time it is normal to thing how distant past or near future events with no immediate contact have real physical effects on the present. In time the relation between things is not the same as how things relate spatially.
Things relate spatially when they are within some kind of approximation and they are compact or in contact with each other. While in time this relation is inverted, it is of a duration extending outwards, how far of an extent it can go further away from itself, how far can two things be away from each other not nearest and not only in distance, but generally what it means for one moment to be completely separate from another. To what extent it can be as furthest as possible away. Which does not make sense spatially because something at a very far distance from something else is still disclosed within a spatial reference frame that makes them unified into the same dimension, this is what solar systems and galaxies involve, many distinct bodies separated by vast distances sharing the same spatial extension. To be truly extensive from something else means that it does not occur within the same period, that both things occur at different times per say. Furthest away from each other in time means one thing is present while the other is not.
Space defines time by distance- the longer the distance the more time
But how time affects space is by making space into a ridged and uneven plain, a bunch of different and discrete points. We call it “point” because it is the tip of a curve, points are abstraction of the obstructions of spacetime, peaks of energy that are observable to be defining of a mass in space. A point is the first thing or the last thing that can be seen at the first or the last instance of a mass. Like the top of the iceberg, it’s very rip point.
Experience is the quality of duration
The term experience is the qualitative measure for a duration, which is the abstraction of continuity in time. Continuity is the consistent existence of something over a period of time. We say “over” a “period of time”, because a period is a conception disclosing content, the identification of which contains continuity. Content however contains overlapping of differences but the experience is the maintenance of these differences in content into the same duration.
The pragmatic empirical Defines Experience as knowledge acquired over certain period of time. However more ontologically speaking the endurance throughout a period of time invariably involves knowledge. When something goes through a period of time, this is what it means to have knowledge of it. Knowledge is not merely the observation of something but the actually undergoing of the duration in time relating to a content of quality.
Also experience in the philosophies of empiricism is used to denote observation of events and facts by being in contact with them. The two fold meaning of Experience explains that what it mean to be contact is to go through a duration. Coming in contact with something is to go through its duration. Duration is what it means to be in contact. For Aristotle matter is a substrate the whole that takes on the characteristics of activities forming it.
aims to somehow achieve a focus on everything such that the inherent constant flux is a part of the focus. In the same way focus on one object achieves some kind of order away from everything else, the ultimate aim is to achieve an absolute focus on everything else such that the order is an integration of the chaos, which so far as the present moment is considered, everything culminating up to it, is already this process.