Reenvisioning Nature: ESE and Whiteheadian Metaphysics

SEIZING AN ALTERNATIVE Toward an Ecological Civilization June 4-7, 2015 Section IV: Reenvisioning Nature; Reenvisioning Science

Robert J. Valenza, Claremont McKenna College

Some General Points on ESE A brilliant work, with elegance both in its metaphysical priorities and physical analysis. Enormously satisfying as a conceptual framework for quantum-level events, rather than the mere acquiescence to an effective mathematical framework.

Some General Points on ESE Indeed, quantum formalism does not describe individual quantum events. (For instance, measurement abrogates the Schr dinger equation.) In light of SR, there is no coherent physical theory of how a particle can interact with itself. This invites reflection in connections with a problem with the placement of the photon in process metaphysics.

A Question in the Context of Whiteheadian Metaphysics (Take One) What is it like to be a photon? Or more precisely: What sort of experience does a photon have? This question carries three explicit premises.

Premise 1 Process theory is a metaphysical systemin which, as David Griffin has often said, experience goes all the way down. There is a profound and much emphasized distinction here between consciousness and experience, but, nonetheless, experience includes some degree of subjectivity of feeling.

Premise 2 I see no way to make sense of the notion of experience a fundamental component of the world without the antecedent or concomitant notion of time. Indeed, one speaks of stages of concrescence, and while this may not commit the internals of the process itself to a physio-temporal disposition, the idea that concrescence completes with the birth of an actual entity which is subsequently data for other actual entities certainly would seem to do so. Hence we have both subjective and objective indicators of time for any concrescing entity. For Whitehead, this comprises the entire world.

Premise 3 A hugely consistent and extensive body of theory and corroborative empirical evidence asserts that for a photon, no physical time passes at all. Time dilation is already a consequence of Einstein s special theory of relativity, with time slowing for any kind of clock which is to say physical process asymptotically to zero as an object approaches the speed of light. Photons, being light, therefore are not subject to time in any physical sense.

The Question (Take Two) In light of these three premises, how, then, does a photon, as an actual entity in no way metaphysically distinguished in process thought, conform to the general theory of concrescence, which axiomatically involves an experiential and therefore internal temporal attribute, as well as an objective and therefore external temporal attribute?

The Easy Way Out Deny Premise 1. That is, implicitly or explicitly accept the something- from-nothing entrance of experience into reality and go on with other, more tractable work. (Well, there is the Mind-Body Problem...)

Feynman on the Ontological Commitment to Photons Newton thought that light was made up of particles he called them corpuscles and he was right (but the reasoning that he used to come to that decision was erroneous). We know that light is made of particles because we can take a very sensitive instrument that makes clicks when light shines on it, and if the light gets dimmer, the clicks remain just as loud there are just fewer of them. Thus light is something like raindrops each little lump of light is called a photon and if the light is all one color, all the raindrops are the same size.

Travelling Alone at the Speed of Light The photon constitutes a society, independently of its physical wave-particle duality. To constitute a society, the class-name has got to apply to each member, by reason of genetic derivation from other members of that same society. What sense can one then make of this? Thinking about time

Two Notions of Time (Fagg) Subjective and continuous time. Objective and discrete time. Taking subjectivity off the table, as Science does, the experiential-subjective state at best supervenes on the physical state, and yet the latter, from the perspective of the photon, is frozen in physical time.

The Question (Take Three) The photon does move through physical time insofar as, in the reference frame of any given observer, we might want to say it is here at this time and there at that time, but according to Premise 2, it cannot experience the intervening time in its own frame because no physical time passes; there can be no antecedent physical data. And if this is so, how can we speak of the internal creative progression of actual entities that must participate in the genetic derivation of any society?

Four Provisional Resolutions: R1 Experience requires subjective time but neither requires nor supervenes on physical time. But how to prehend prior actual occasions? The dissociation of experience from physical time (and therefore real events) raises the specter of dualism.

Four Provisional Resolutions: R2 Experience does not even require subjective time. Maybe we can make sense of this repugnant proposal, but it still falls hard against the first objection to R1. The denial of R1 and R2 affirms P2, and we must look elsewhere. Moreover, the supervenience of subjective time on physical time is inconsistent with Whitehead insofar as it subverts the notion of creative advancement.

Four Provisional Resolutions: R3 The photon is not subject to concrescence between interactions. But something intermediate is required by quantum theory to support the very idea of a superposition of states, and this must be an actual entity. This is also inconsistent with the ESE analysis.

Four Provisional Resolutions: R4 We have a crack in the refutation of R1: the conflation of prehension with the physical transmission of information, ignoring perception in the mode of causal efficacy. But there is still a problem: How does the next instance of the photon come to achieve actuality? It would seem as if the hierarchy that replaces time in concrescence continues out of time from one actual occasion to the next. (GAZ worlds)

A Third Meaning of Time We postulate the priority of the atemporal hierarchy of concrescence as the basis for experience and subjective time. Since we do not experience the world as a GAZ world, we cannot know what it is like to be a photon, but this analysis does suggest that we take atemporal processes seriously, and even extend their deployment.

Two Questions for ESE What is happening within the cycle of actualization? Is there a homotopy between the beginning and end with respect to temporal and geometric relations? What could this look like? Would ESE make sense if the diagram for a photon were compressed to a vertical line? If so, R4 is the corresponding metaphysical position. If not, the photon s discontent persists.