Rick wrote: ↑Sun Jan 27, 2019 12:32 am
boundless wrote: ↑Sat Jan 26, 2019 6:00 pmIn other words, the position of process philosophers might be inconsistent: they say that 'what exists'
changes but at the same time they say that it has a persistent identity (as a 'process' rather than a thing) and, therefore, they still, in fact, seem to imply that 'what exists' has an unchanging essence (after all, they say that there is a persistent identity), despite the fact that they say otherwise.
Hi, boundless.
Disclaimer: My knowledge of Whitehead is pretty much limited to the top-level headlines. I haven't dared (yet!) to actually work through Process and Reality or even a good commentary on it. With that in mind ...
Hi Rick,
well I should have done a similar 'Disclaimer' both for Whitehaed's philosophy and Madhyamaka, actually! Anyway, I think that there are similarities between them. So, a comparison might be interesting.
Rick wrote: ↑Sun Jan 27, 2019 12:32 am
I can understand why you'd feel that Whitehead's process metaphysics implies an unchanging essence. PM is, after all, grounded in experience, and experience reveals <what appears to be> persistence, so it stands to reason that PM needs to have some way of explaining this. But the mechanism of persistence, eternal objects working on actual occasions, is in my (puny) understanding nuanced and subtle and complicated, anything but simple and clear-cut. Which might mean that what it seems to imply is not, in fact, what Whitehead intended it to imply.
Whatcha think?
Yeah, I agree it is quite complicated. IMHO, Whitehead explains 'persistence' in terms of regularities, i.e. by saying that we observe regularities, 'dynamic patterns' and so on. So, according to Whitehead, 'entities' are those 'dynamic patterns'. And, identity is not 'defined' in terms of unchanging substances but, rather, in terms of unchanging 'modes of becoming', so to speak. I find it a very fascinating philosophy, by the way.
Yet, if these dynamic patterns are taken to 'truly exist' we have the following dilemma. If a pattern ceases, do we have an
annihilation of an existent? If the same pattern persists forever, do we have
eternal existence of an existent? In particular, we can make a similar analysis for the 'I'. If we say that the 'I' is a 'dynamic pattern', do we really escape from eternalism and annihilationism?
So, I think that we can have eternalist and annihilationist views based on PM. This more or less was the point I was making yesterday. On the other hand, I think that Buddhism also accepts 'regularities' (see for instance
this post where I quoted some 'Sravaka sutras'...). I do not know how Buddhism 'deals' with regularities, or Madhyamaka in particular. Yet, I can see the problem in taking regularities as 'existents'.
Anyway, please take what I say with a grain of salt. Personally, as I said, I think that one can find similarities.
stevie wrote: ↑Sun Jan 27, 2019 2:15 pm
...
Hi stevie,
thanks for your clear analysis.
Best wishes,
boundless