1Free of Religion & Religious Heritage
FROM APPREHENSION TO PREHENSION:
EXPLORING A DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE
FOR PHILOSOPHICAL SPECULATION
Tomas G. Rosario, Jr.
Ateneo De Manila University, Philippines
Abstract
Both Aristotle and St. Thomas are acknowledged to have firmly
established, at least in a general way, the close link between our
experience of the material world and the metaphysical articulation
of the said sphere of reality. Their philosophies are recognized to have
provided the rational confirmation of the beliefs and convictions of
ordinary men who rely mainly on their experiences for their
understanding of what is real. On this premise it is plausible to esteem
the two as philosophers of the common man. And yet, like all thinkers
who generate and nourish philosophical inquiry through reliance on
experience, both Aristotle and Aquinas confined experience to
conscious experience or what Whitehead has called 'sense-perception'.
Whitehead considered this traditional view on the starting point of
philosophical analysis as erroneous although he clarified that "the
mistake was natural for mediaeval and Greek philosophers: for they
had not modern physics before them as a plain warning."
Whitehead therefore initiates an inquiry into the radically new
conception of experience. This entirely new view of experience is
called by Whitehead "prehension", which is the theme of this paper.
As we shall see, it appears to be the implicit thesis of Whitehead that
the only way to access the so called 'ultimately primitive experience'
is not by means of traditional sense apprehension but only through a
non-cognitive act of appropriation.
86 Prajñâ Vihâra, Volume 7, Number 1, January-June, 2006, 86-108
© 2000 by Assumption University Press
Introduction
Philosophers would hardly question the general conviction that
philosophical thinking is not only stimulated but is also continuously
nourished by experience. In this regard, we may refer to the pertinent
teaching of Aristotle in view of his major influence as a metaphysical thinker
on other great philosophers. When he declared what today has become a
popular philosophical tenet namely that, "all men by nature desire to know,"1
one could not fail to notice that Aristotle initially referred to sense knowledge
which is common to both man and animals.2 Yet he was obviously
concerned to show that, although both man and animals do have sense
experience by which they respectively have knowledge of things as
individuals,3 only man could attain universal knowledge and understanding
by means of art and reasoning. Nonetheless, Aristotle was unequivocal in
affirming that "…science and art come to men through experience…"4
But still, even if both science and art provide knowledge and understanding
in a manner that is superior to sense experience, Aristotle maintained that
it is philosophical knowledge that constitutes the highest science or wisdom
insofar as it deals with the first causes and most universal principles.5
In his treatise on human knowledge, Thomas Aquinas referred to
the abovementioned teaching of Aristotle clearly noting that for the
Philosopher "…the beginning of our knowledge is from the senses."6
Furthermore, we gather from the following text of 84, 7, which is
considered as the key passage in St.Thomas's theory of knowledge, an a
fortiori affirmation of the indispensable role of sense experience not only
in the acquisition of knowledge but also in actual understanding.7 In other
words, without sense experience not only is it impossible to gain knowledge
of material things in this world but it is also not possible to actually use the
said acquired knowledge.8 For this reason, St.Thomas noted that actual
understanding by the human intellect would be impeded if there is an injury
or illness to the bodily organs that are used by sense faculties like sight,
hearing, imagination, memory, and the like.9 Hence, in man's temporal life,
the human intellect could not know anything unless there is sense
experience.10
We relied on the teachings of Aristotle and St.Thomas regarding
the key role of experience in philosophical thinking insofar as both are
Tomas G. Rosario, Jr. 87
acknowledged to have firmly established, at least in a general way, the
close link between our experience of the material world and the
metaphysical articulation of the said sphere of reality. Their philosophies
are recognized to have provided the rational confirmation of the beliefs
and convictions of ordinary men who rely mainly on their experiences for
their understanding of what is real. On this premise it is plausible to esteem
the two as philosophers of the common man. And yet, like all thinkers
who generate and nourish philosophical inquiry through reliance on
experience, both Aristotle and Aquinas confined experience to conscious
experience or what Whitehead has called 'sense-perception'.11 Whitehead
considered this traditional view on the starting point of philosophical analysis
as erroneous although he clarified that "the mistake was natural for
mediaeval and Greek philosophers: for they had not modern physics before
them as a plain warning."12
The above brief discussion of the common understanding of
experience as a conscious phenomenon at its origin, and the initial critical
reaction of Whitehead against such view provide the background entry
for our inquiry into the radically new conception of experience by process
philosophers, in particular, by Whitehead. This entirely new view of
experience by process thinkers entails what Whitehead also called a 'special
activity' called "prehension" which is the very theme of the inquiry in this
paper. As we shall see, it appears to be the implicit thesis of Whitehead
that the only way to access the so called 'ultimately primitive experience' is
not by means of traditional sense apprehension but only through a non-
cognitive act of appropriation.
From Apprehension to Prehension
What is probably the central notion of Whitehead's process
metaphysics or what he himself called his own version of a "philosophy of
organism"13 is the very difficult notion of "prehension."14 As we shall
uncover, all the surface meanings and the nuances of prehension will point
to the principal thesis of Whitehead's social metaphysics namely, that the
capacity for prehension of actual entities is indicative of their dependence
on one another, or, of their social existence. First of all, Whitehead clarified
88 Prajñâ Vihâra
his usage of this term: "I will use the word prehension for uncognitive
apprehension: by this I mean apprehension which may or may not be
cognitive."15 Further clarification is provided in another work when he
said that "this term is devoid of suggestion either of consciousness or of
representative perception."16 These clarifications unquestionably show that
Whitehead has given up on the traditional or common usage of the terms,
"apprehension" and "perception" in their essentially cognitive or conscious
character.17 We could, then, refer to apprehension or perception when
we speak of prehension on condition that we do not link it with conscious
knowledge.
It is also significant to the understanding of the notion of prehension
that we now point out the fact that Whitehead's introduction of this radical
notion constitutes also his rejection of Berkeley's subjective idealism18
synoptically defined by his philosophical slogan, esse est percipi aut
percipere. If one is familiar with his epistemological theory, one could
recall that in reducing the reality of things to their being perceived by the
mind, Berkeley absolutized the existence of the mind. Whitehead, however,
found this key teaching of Berkeley to be metaphysically problematic and
proposed instead a view that represents a realist epistemology.19 In this
connection, he deemed the following obscure passage from 'Francis
Bacon's Natural History' to embody a theory of realism that he favored
and, at the same time, is supportive of his scientific reading of the realities
in nature: "It is certain that all bodies whatsoever, though they have no
sense, yet they have perception…"20 This text must clearly refer, at least,
to all inanimate bodies since they have no sense faculties and so they are
incapable of cognitive perception. But to say that they are capable of
'perception' even if they have no senses is to affirm a 'noncognitive
perception,' which will be explored by Whitehead into a theory of
prehension.
Primitive, Non-Conscious Experience
It is probably one of the radical insights of Whitehead's metaphysics
of prehension that there could be experience without consciousness.21 In
asserting that "…an actual entity may, or may not be conscious of some
Tomas G. Rosario, Jr. 89
part of its experience,"22 we encounter a radically different understanding
of experience. First of all, it necessarily implies that Whitehead has
conceived of experience as having a wider meaning than the notion of
consciousness. Just as we are familiar with the common notion of conscious
experience, or, what phenomenologists call 'intentional experience', there
is a "…primitive form of physical experience…"23 that "…does not
necessarily involve consciousness."24 Although it is a long-established
tradition that philosophers do not dissociate consciousness with knowledge,
Whitehead did not adhere to this tradition in his construction of his own
metaphysical doctrine of experience.25 He did not see consciousness as
having a necessary role but only an additional value in the subject-object
interplay in experience.26 But, in providing us a distinction between conscious
experience and primitive physical experience in Process and Reality,
Whitehead has not explicitated in definite terms what constitutes experience
in itself such that consciousness is not essential to it.27 He has practically
hidden the meaning of experience by using a term peculiar to physics and
described physical experience as similar to a "vector feeling."28 We have
to look for clarification elsewhere.
First of all, Whitehead pointed out in his work, Symbolism that "the
word 'experience' is one of the most deceitful in philosophy"29 obviously
convinced that this notion must be carefully examined since its wider and
much richer meaning has long been overlooked. If we turn to his Adventure
of Ideas, we find some of his less technical reflections on the fundamental
meaning of experience. At the outset, he expressed his agreement with
modern thinkers like Descartes, Locke, and Hume that the subject-object
relation is the fundamental structure of experience.30 But he rejected their
position that the knower-known cognitive structure is the prototype of
this subject-object relation.31 This means that, for him, what is truly
primordial when we speak of experience is not cognitive in character but
something "emotional."32 But again we should not be misled into thinking
that Whitehead was speaking of human emotion. We need to go back at
this point of our inquiry to Process and Reality for needed textual support.
Whitehead noted here that "the primitive form of physical experience is
emotional---blind emotion---received as felt elsewhere in another
occasion…"33 In other words, he was convinced that we could refer to a
non-conscious 'emotional experience', an experience so primitive and so
90 Prajñâ Vihâra
elementary that it is universal to all entities of the natural world. This 'primitive
form of physical experience' is referred to in his Theory of Feelings, as a
"simple physical feeling." And he described this 'simple physical feeling' as
"…the most primitive type of an act of perception, devoid of
consciousness."34 It appears, then, that Whitehead is calling our attention
to a widely unrecognized---perhaps, because it does not enter human
consciousness---yet the most fundamental, and so, the most universal of
all levels and types of experiences namely, a simple physical feeling which
is the most primitive type of physical experience.
Let us briefly turn to a pertinent passage in his other work, Religion
in the Making, since it helps clarify not only his rejection of the common
view of modern philosophers that experience has a fundamentally cognitive
structure but also why the theory of prehension must be necessarily linked
with a more fundamental experience that Whitehead believed has been
ignored by most philosophers:
The phrase 'immediate experience' can have either of two meanings,
according as it refers to the physical or to the mental occasion. It may
mean a complete concretion of physical relationships in the unity of a
blind perceptivity. In this sense 'immediate experience' means an ultimate
physical fact. But in a secondary, and more usual, sense it means the
consciousness of physical experience. Such consciousness is a mental
occasion. It has the character of being an analysis of physical experience
by synthesis with the concepts involved in the mentality. Such analysis
is incomplete, because it is dependent on the limitations of the concepts.
….The most complete concrete fact is dipolar, physical and mental.35
In downgrading the common notion of 'immediate experience' i.e.
as 'consciousness of physical experience' to a secondary meaning,
Whitehead has, in effect, sought to abandon what is generally considered
as the starting point of philosophical inquiry. 'Immediate experience' in this
sense could be equated with our sense perception of the objects around
us. Most epistemological doctrines consider sense perception as the
beginning of knowledge or as the initial illustration of the knower-known
structure. But since, for Whitehead, consciousness is a mental occasion'
and it entails the use of concepts, we may plausibly conclude that this
experience is more abstract rather than concrete. Now, if philosophy is
Tomas G. Rosario, Jr. 91
supposed to deal with what is most concretely real, this could only be the
'ultimate physical fact' or an occasion of experience whose concrete reality,
as we shall see, does not depend on consciousness or on the mind.
Now, the effort however of Whitehead in Process and Reality to
illustrate this most primitive and most fundamental type of experience, or
what he called in this book, a 'simple physical feeling', remains technical
and could not stimulate in us concrete images of ordinary events in our
daily experience.36 When Whitehead, for instance, has given the abstract
illustration of an actual entity A 'physically feeling' other actual entities like
X, Y, and Z, which also ' 'feel' each other respectively, we have to greatly
struggle, just like his more dedicated and more erudite scholars, if we
wish to understand this in terms of common experience, or, to see how
these elementary and primary entities have a nexus or have a relation to
one another, or, how they undergo the process of integration into a unified
whole. We should, then, try to look for pertinent or related teachings of
Whitehead in his less technical work, Adventure of Ideas.
In the same section where he dwelt on the subject-object structure
of experience, Whitehead provided us with what appeared to be the
essential or general meaning of experience when he spoke of it in the
following manner:
The process of experiencing is constituted by the reception of entities,
whose being is antecedent to that process into the complex fact which is
that process itself. These antecedent entities, thus received as factors
into the process of experiencing, are termed 'objects' for that experiential
occasion…. Thus the process of experiencing is constituted by the
reception of objects into the unity of that complex occasion which is the
process itself. The process creates itself, but it does not create the objects
which it receives as factors in its own nature.37
If Whitehead has enunciated here the essential meaning of
experience, it is evident that the notion of consciousness is not a major
factor in his conception of experience. He highlighted, at least, in the above
text, the key role of object in the whole process of experiencing. An isolated
reading of this passage might give one the impression of a passive notion
of experience in view of the unequivocal reference to it as a process of
'reception of entities' or of the object. Before we continue in drawing out
92 Prajñâ Vihâra
the nuances of this passage in relation to the primitive notion of experience,
it is good to turn to an earlier passage where Whitehead disabused our
minds concerning this impression on the passivity of the process of
experience. According to him, the subject-object structure of experience
could have been expressed in terms of "…Recipient and Provoker, where
the fact provoked is an affective tone about the status of the provoker in
the provoked experience."38 In this relationship, the object plays the role
of the Provoker while the subject or what is referred to in the above text
as the complex occasion of the process of experience itself is the Recipient.
What he found unfortunate, however, in this different illustration of the
subject-object structure of experience is that "…the word 'recipient'
suggests a passivity which is erroneous."39 This categorical clarification by
Whitehead should make us realize that he had not thought of the process
of experience in a purely passive manner.
Yet in viewing the 'process of experiencing' as constituted by the
'reception of entities' or 'objects,' it seems to me that the simplification of
the subject-object structure of experience in terms of Provoker-Recipient
relation would have been satisfactory for Whitehead if not for the clear
connotation of passivity in the use of the term 'recipient.' In other words,
the Provoker-Recipient relation would have met his radical view of non-
cognitive experience, which could not be expressed properly by the
knower-known relation because of its parochial meaning. Nonetheless
what is noteworthy, if we go back now to the long passage, in his description
of the process of experiencing is the unequivocal affirmation of the notion
of receptivity. It might be the case that this notion is used in describing the
primitive sense of experience in order to point out the major role played
by the object as one of the key elements of and as 'received' in the complex
process of experience. We can notice at the end of the text that he asserted
without equivocation that the objects received are not 'created' by the
process itself although the process 'creates' itself. It is obviously crucial to
Whitehead's conception of experience that the object, which subsequently
forms part of the process of experience, has its own being prior to and
independent of the new event of experience. It is for this reason, I believe,
that he insisted on the antecedent character of the object if it is to be
considered as a component of the process of experience.
It is at least clear in the Adventure of Ideas that Whitehead has
Tomas G. Rosario, Jr. 93
introduced the highly complex notion of prehension in connection with his
critical discussion of the traditional philosophical conception of experience
in terms of the subject-object framework. In his rejection of the knower-
known model by which experience in its widest sense could be articulated,
he deemed it most appropriate to employ a new conceptual tool namely,
the notion of prehension. It is also crucial to our understanding of the
notion of prehension that Whitehead did not link it, in particular, to human
experience ordinarily considered as conscious and cognitive. And, since
prehension is not essentially related with conscious experience, much less
with knowledge, it must be the most universal activity affecting at least
every reality in nature; it must be the most universal event. Furthermore,
this new notion also constitutes his rejection of Berkeley's subjective
idealism and of his de-emphasis of the role of the mind in defining the
reality of natural entities.
The occasional effort of Whitehead to render his very complex
teaching on the notion of prehension less difficult in his Adventure of
Ideas and in Science and the Modern World should not deceive us and
lead us into the pitfall of oversimplification of his conception of the said
notion. If he has spoken of 'prehensions in nature' as 'events in nature,'40
or, that the term 'event' could be used instead of the term 'prehension' this
does not mean that prehension and event are thoroughly synonymous.
This is not to deny, however, that the highly technical notion of prehension
could, in a general sense, be considered as referring to events insofar as
both partake of the dynamic idea of process. We could add the observation
that the reality of event as a concrete process and the reality of the process
of prehension are hardly distinguishable so much so that one might confuse
the two and view them as identical. In fact, Hartshorne, who is the leading
scholar in the promotion of Whitehead's thought, has taken effort to simplify
the esoteric teachings of the latter by speaking more of events and concrete
experiences rather than of prehensions and of actual entities.
Yet, the total reality of a particular event is still analyzable into more
elementary functions, and prehension, as the creative and unifying activity
of this event, is one of its elementary functions.41 We may initially point out
that Whitehead, as we have already seen, uses the term 'prehension' to
signify a non-cognitive activity of perception or apprehension. If we return
now to Process and Reality he spoke here of prehension as a particular
94 Prajñâ Vihâra
"…process of appropriation of a particular element…"42 As an activity of
appropriating or grasping, prehension necessarily implies that which is
grasped or appropriated. That which is appropriated or grasped is referred
to in Process and Reality as the 'actual entities or the ultimate elements of
the universe',43 or, as 'prehensive event' in Science and the Modern
World.44 But this distinction between the act of appropriating and that
which is appropriated is relevant since it leads us back to the crucial
background of our current discussion of the theory of prehension namely,
the subject-object structure of experience. The process of prehension
entails, then, the subject-object model in the clarification of experience.
Components of Prehension
In fact, Whitehead categorically referred to this subject-object
relation in his exposition of the notion of prehension in both Process and
Reality and Adventure of Ideas. In chapter 2 of Part I of Process and
Reality where he begun to clarify the difficult notions that he regularly
employed in explaining his philosophy of organism, he analyzed the notion
of prehension into three aspects:
(a) the 'subject' which is prehending, namely, the actual entity in
which that prehension is a concrete element;
(b) the 'datum' which is prehended; the 'subjective form' which
is how that subject prehends that datum.45
However, Whitehead did not provide any elaboration for this text
in the same location where it was cited. We have to go back to Adventure
of Ideas where the notion of prehension is introduced as a 'formal
explanation' of experience in accordance with the subject-object relational
structure. Here, the subject of prehension, which is none other than the
actual entity, is illustrated as an occasion of experience, or, we may say, a
particular concrete event.46 And he clearly noted that prehension as an
activity is just one of the details or elements constitutive of the whole
Tomas G. Rosario, Jr. 95
occasion of experience. This is an obvious indication that prehension as
an activity or as a process of appropriating is distinct from the actual
entity, or, occasion of experience that serves as its subject. Yet, in this
connection, Whitehead made the interesting insight that the subject is active
rather than passive and its active trait is disclosed in its special activity of
prehension. But it is already clear to us that an occasion of experience or
a particular momentary event is the subject of prehension and, since we
could view nature as a manifold of events, dynamic occasions, and
developments then we could view nature as the macrocosmic subject of
prehensions, "…necessarily transitional from prehension to prehension."47
Faithful to his conviction that the subject-object relation is the
only appropriate articulation of experience, Whitehead spoke of the object
of prehension or the datum of prehension as the second factor to be
considered in his conception of prehension. If the subject of prehension is
said to be active insofar as it has the special activity of appropriating the
object, on the other hand, the object is deemed as the 'provoker' or stimulus
of the said special activity of prehension. For this reason, Whitehead
considered the subject and object as correlatives48 and that, in fact, their
progressive union is made possible by the very activity of prehension,
which we shall discuss later. But let us presently dwell on what appears to
me as Whitehead's realist argument against the subjective idealism of
Berkeley. In giving prominence to the role played by the object in the
process of prehension, Whitehead stated his opposition to the fundamental
teaching of Berkeley that the reality of natural things is completely
determined by their being perceived by the mind. It is now relevant to
recall the text cited above concerning the 'process of experiencing'. In
describing this process as the reception of objects into the subject or the
occasion of experience, it is, I think, the intention of Whitehead to declare
his realist position without any taint of equivocation that natural entities
have a reality of their own, which is not established by their relation to the
subject, whether or not this subject is the complex occasion of experience
or the perceiving mind of Berkeley. And to stress that the object, or, the
datum of prehension has a reality that is not generated by the process of
prehension, he prescribed the parameters of 'antecedence' and 'givenness'
so that something could be considered as an object of prehension. In
other words, if the object or datum of prehension is both antecedent to
96 Prajñâ Vihâra
and is something 'given' to the occasion of experience, then, these are
indications that it is a real element in the process but whose reality is not
derived from the process itself.
The third factor in the process of prehension namely, the subjective
form refers to how the subject prehends the object or the datum of
prehension, could be the most crucial factor in the meaning of prehension
in connection with our future goal of doing research on Whitehead's
conception of God's consequent nature. But, for the present moment, we
need to understand what role this third factor really plays in the process of
prehension. In Process and Reality we learn "that there are many species
of subjective forms, such as emotions, valuations, purposes, adversions,
aversions, consciousness, etc."49 With this wide heterogeneity of these
various examples, we seem to be confronted again with another very
complex notion, which is, in fact, a constitutive factor in the already very
difficult notion of prehension. But these diverse types of subjective form
confirm the universality of the phenomenon of the prehensive process.
There are diverse types of subjective forms because there are diverse
subjects of prehension ranging from the inanimate, non-living entities to
the organic realities, up to the level of consciously prehending entities.
And we should not forget that Whitehead employed the notion of
prehension to clarify experience in the widest sense of the term, especially
in its non-cognitive, non-conscious nature. We may initially conclude, then,
that there is a subjective form respectively appropriate to a lower entity
and to a higher entity.50
The observations Whitehead raised in the Adventure of Ideas
might help minimize the difficulty of articulating the notion of 'subjective
form'. He taught here that "subjective form is the character assumed by
the subject by reason of some prehended datum."51 This point could be
clarified by an example he provided in connection with the role of subjective
form on the continuity of an experience. He gave us the case of a man who
is continuously angry due to a hurtful incident in his life. Let us assume that
the immediately past occasion of this man is S (let us specify it as "speaking
before a big group of businessmen"), which "positively prehends" or "feels"
datum L (let us specify datum L as "sudden loss of microphone voice
because someone deliberately lowered the volume control"), and eliciting
subjective form I (let us specify it as "becoming indignant due to the
Tomas G. Rosario, Jr. 97
deliberate disruption of his speech"). The immediately subsequent occasion,
let us call it A (we may describe this new condition of the human individual
we are talking about as "angrily reprimanding the technician in the audio-
visual control room"), now prehends or feels S, the previous occasion
"…with the same subjective form of anger."52 This subjective form, i.e.
anger might persist even in the succeeding occasions of experience (e.g.
occasions T, R, U, V, W, etc.) of this man.
The above illustration of the role of subjective form and, certainly,
even of the prehensive process itself, teaches us at least two things. First,
the subjective form is an indication of the manner the subject is changed53
upon its prehension of an object or a datum, and this object is normally
another occasion of experience or an actual entity. In this sense when
Whitehead spoke of the 'subjective form as the character that the
prehending subject assumes' upon its appropriation of an object, it is a
clear statement that the prehending subject is transformed or re-shaped in
a certain manner or in another manner. We shall return to this point later.
Second, the subjective form also reflects ---and this is the main theme
illustrated by the above-mentioned example ---the continuous actuality of
a certain mode of change in the complex occasion of experience. There is
no question that the example of human anger easily illustrates what
Whitehead meant by subjective form 'as the primary ground for the
continuity of nature' for the obvious reason that continuous anger is a very
common human experience. Hence, if something actual could be said to
be relatively lasting or enduring in man, Whitehead attributed it to the
subjective form of the various occasions of experience or events in the life
of the said human individual.
Common experience teaches us that anger, as an instance of
subjective form, is an emotion that is ordinarily though not exclusively
linked with consciousness.54 In the above example, the continuing anger
of the speaker is sustained by his consciousness of the datum that elicited
his anger. It is certainly not to be denied that both emotion and consciousness
are two types of subjective form, which are ordinarily associated with
occasions of human experience. In our momentary concrete states, we
are calm or angry, happy or sad; we are also generally aware in particular
moments of activities. But if Whitehead has told us in Process and Reality
that "…the subjective form of a simple physical feeling does not involve
98 Prajñâ Vihâra
consciousness…"55 we are reminded initially of the focus of his inquiry
namely, that there is a primordial experience which is non-conscious and
non-cognitive and is appropriately articulated by the notion of prehension.
It seems plausible then to assume that just as he is more concerned with
non-conscious perception so Whitehead was equally focused on subjective
forms that have nothing to do with consciousness.
'Primitive Feeling' as Prehensive Activity
Further reading of the teachings of Whitehead on the notion of
prehension, together with the foregoing analyses induces us to make the
further major observation that the above-mentioned notion serves as his
argument for his disinterest in the traditional epistemological theory of
abstraction. According to him,
The conventionalized abstractions prevalent in epistemological theory
are very far from the concrete facts of experience. The word 'feeling' has
the merit of preserving the double significance of subjective form and of
the apprehension of an object. It avoids the disjecta membra provided by
abstraction.56
Let us first point out that Whitehead adopted the term "feeling"
according to the meaning developed by F. H. Bradley namely, as the
irreducible underlying activity of experience itself.57 He was convinced
that Bradley's theory of feeling is the fitting explanation of our apprehension
of the most concrete and integrated wholeness of immediate experience.
He adopted also but reinterpreted Bradley's notion of "inclusive whole,"
which the latter thinker considered as presupposed by relation rather than
as a manifestation of relation. In his reinterpretation, Whitehead deemed
this "inclusive whole," as actually referring to the actual connectedness, or
better, intrinsic relation, of individual or atomic58 occasions of experience.
There is no doubt that Whitehead has greatly admired Bradley for
his great insight on the key role of feeling in the non-cognitive apprehension
of experience. Since feeling is non-cognitive and non-abstractive, it
preserves the unity and richness of an occasion of experience. To feel an
occasion of experience is to grasp it as an inclusive whole such that the
Tomas G. Rosario, Jr. 99
subject, the datum or object of prehension, and the subjective form are
intact in their complex but integrated unity. On the other hand, the process
of abstraction, since it is essentially analytical and reductive, breaks up the
rich unity of concrete experience. The constitutive elements of concrete
experience are separated in view of the misplaced belief that the essential
must be discovered and isolated because it is the core of reality. In this
task, the mind has the principal role. We may recall that Whitehead
criticized Berkeley's subjective idealism i.e. a doctrine that reduces the
reality of natural things to the perception of a unifying mind. He
recommended instead the following: "For Berkeley's mind, I substitute a
process of prehensive unification."59 This very unusual view of Whitehead
is tantamount to a blanket indictment of all epistemological theories as
failed attempts to clarify experience. All theories of knowledge are myopic
insofar as all of them confine experience to human experience and, as a
consequence, essentially relate experience to a cognitive faculty especially
to intellectual faculties. Perhaps it is inevitable for philosophers to
"overintellectualize"60 their exposition of experience since, by definition,
they seek knowledge.61 Whitehead belittled, however, the role of
knowledge in the reality and structure of experience by treating it as an
additional but non-essential factor in a given occasion of experience.62
Going back to his adoption of Bradley's doctrine of Feeling,
Whitehead has sometimes used it interchangeably with the term
"prehension."63 Yet we may recall that it is also true that he sometimes
loosely uses the term 'prehension' by equating it with event.64 Now, we
find the specific definition of Feeling as 'positive prehension' in both Process
and Reality65 and Adventure of Ideas.66 In the former work, feeling as
positive prehension is distinguished from "negative prehension," which
signifies that a datum has no definite contribution to make in the
"concrescence" or 'real internal constitution' of a subject of prehension.67
If negative prehension indicates the exclusion of an object of prehension,
positive prehension, or, feeling refers to the definite positive contribution
of an object of prehension in the concrescence or self-transformation of
an occasion of experience. It also follows from this that the datum or
object of prehension becomes preserved as an integral part of the creative
development or expansion of the reality of the prehending occasion of
experience.68
100 Prajñâ Vihâra
The above discussion of prehension in terms of 'feeling' could
help minimize the difficulty of clarifying the very fundamental yet truly esoteric
thesis of Whitehead that there is a primitive experience which precedes
the familiar conscious experience associated with traditional philosophical
inquiry. This 'feeling' is equally primitive insofar as it is also unaccompanied
by any form of vital consciosness or by any sense consciousness. The
actual entity as the subject of this feeling is said to 'feel' or to prehend in
the sense that it appropriates "…some elements in the universe to be
components in the real internal constitution of its subject."69 We might as
well say then that prehension viewed as an activity of feeling is none other
than the appropriation or 'active receptivity' of influencing events, whether
small or very small in size, by the actual entity that prehends or 'feels'. But
the 'feeling' itself is a constitutive element in the concrescence or novel
integration of the actual entity undergoing change.70
Feeling as prehensive activity would be easy to understand if it were
to be associated with Whitehead's own example of the feeling of anger
used above to illustrate the meaning of subjective form which is one of the
components of prehension. However, the feeling of anger though a clear
illustration of the subjective form of prehension does not exemplify what
Whitehead referred to as primitive, non-conscious feelings. If this primitive
experience of feeling, which Whitehead referred to as a 'simple physical
feeling' and as 'the most primitive type of perception', is the most common
event of prehension in the universe we are then confronted with a
phenomenon so widespread yet unnoticed and, perhaps, of no serious
interest to most philosophers. This is so because, as Whitehead himself
acknowledged, philosophers normally deal on the sort of experience that
is at least accessible to our knowing faculties. While the feeling of anger is
consciously experienced by man, this primitive type of feeling is 'felt' by an
atomic reality called actual entity.
Prehension as a primitive feeling is obviously an experience so
atomic in size that we do not notice them71 as they occur in our surroundings
and even in us. Whitehead himself recognized that we could never
differentiate one simple physical feeling with another physical feeling as
they occur because of their atomic size. In our daily lives alone, there is an
innumerable succession of unnoticed events or occurrences actually
affecting us. These atomic, unnoticed influences are probably mostly
Tomas G. Rosario, Jr. 101
physical and are coming from the equally innumerable elements of nature,
but they may also be psychological which may be caused either by natural
phenomena or by our interaction with our fellowmen. It should be beyond
debate that our bodies have so much more of this so-called 'primitive
experiences' by means of 'simple physical feeling' than of influences captured
by sense perception or by sense consciousness. If these atomic influences,
which are 'primitively felt' by our bodies, would turn out to be beneficial or
harmful to us it is the teaching of our ordinary experiences that it is at the
later and large stages of their build up or development72 in our bodies that
we realize or we become aware of any of these atomic influences or
prehensions. For instance, the physical, physiological, psychological, and
even intellectual growths of any human individual are due to innumerable
external and internal influences which are also imperceptibly felt neither by
the individual concerned nor even by the people with whom he regularly
interacts. It is usually at later stages of growth that we notice the obvious
change in the physical transformation of an individual.
What this inquiry tries to demonstrate is the reality of an area of
experience which Whitehead has discovered to be located outside sense
perception, or, prior to conscious experience. Because of this location, it
is inaccessible to sense apprehension or, to sense experience. Whitehead
theorized that in this area of 'primitive experience' what takes place is not
apprehension but 'prehension', a new notion with which most philosophers
and even the celebrated ones are unfamiliar. Yet, our inquiry has shown
that although this is a very complex notion it is not completely alien to the
teachings and testimonies of our ordinary experience. This we tried to
exemplify, in fact, in the immediately preceding paragraph. If this very
complex notion has any value for further philosophical research, Whitehead
himself has trail-blazed its relevance by applying this notion to the
metaphysics of divine nature. In other words, he has developed a
metaphysical doctrine of divine prehension especially in the last section of
his major work, Process and Reality. And his followers, notably Charles
Hartshorne, have vigorously explored and reinterpreted the richness of
this notion for the benefit both of the philosophical articulation and
theological exegesis of God-belief.
102 Prajñâ Vihâra
Tomas G. Rosario, Jr. 103
ENDNOTES
1 "Metaphysics," Richard Mc Keon, The Basic Works of Aristotle (New
York: Random House, 1941), I, 1. 980a.
2 Ibid., I, 1. 980a25-980b.
3 Ibid., I, 1. 981a15.
4 Ibid., I, 1. 981a5.
5 Ibid., I, 1. 981b25-30; I, 2. 982a5-982b10.
6 Summa theologiae, I, 84, 6. Henceforth to be cited as ST.
7 "…impossibile est nostrum intellectum, secundum praesentis vitae
statum, quo passibili corpori conjungitur, aliquid intelligere in actu, nisi
convertendo se ad phantasmata." Ibid., I, 84, 7.
8 "Unde manifestum est quod ad hoc quod intellectus actu intelligat,
non solum accipiendo scientiam de novo, sed etiam utendo scientia iam acquisita,
requiritur actus imaginationis et ceterarum virtutum." Loc.cit..
104 Prajñâ Vihâra
9 "Videmus enim quod, impedito actu virtutis imaginativae per laesionem
organi, ut in phreneticis; et similiter impeditu actu memorativae virtutis, ut in
lethargicis; impeditur homo ab intelligendi in actu etiam ea quorum scientiam
praeaccepit." Loc. cit..
10 "…impossibile est intellectum nostrum, secundum praesentis vitae
statum, quo passibili corpori conjungitur, aliquid intelligere in actu, nisi
convertendo se ad phantasmata. Loc.cit.
11 Whitehead actually accused John Locke of fundamental misconcep-
tion for the latter's failure to see that there is an experience more primitive than
sense-perception. But he also attributed the same misconception to thinkers he
referred to as 'medieval and Greek philosophers'. He could have named Aristotle
and Aquinas. See Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Harper
& Row Publishers, 1960) Part II, chapter 4, section 2, p.173.
12 Loc.cit..
13 Ibid., "Preface," pp. v-vi. See Victor Lowe, "Whitehead's Metaphysical
System," Process Philosophy and Christian Thought. Edited by Delwin Brown,
Ralph James, Jr., and Gene Reeves (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc. 1971),
p.3.
14 Whitehead acknowledged that the use of the term "prehension" is
awkward. See Alfred North Whitehead, "Science and the Modern World," Alfred
North Whitehead, An Anthology. Selected by F.S.C. Northrop and Mason W.
Gross (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1961), p. 429. Hereafter to be cited as "Sci-
ence and the Modern World." Despite the esoteric trait of the Whiteheadian no-
tion of prehension, Hartshorne considered it as "…one of the greatest intellectual
discoveries ever made." "Hartshorne: Response to Paul Weiss," Charles
Hartshorne, Existence and Actuality, Conversations with Charles Hartshorne.
Edited by John B. Cobb, Jr. and Franklin I. Gamwell (Chicago:The University of
Chicago Press, 1984), p.124.
15 Ibid., p.426.
16 Alfred North Whitehead, Adventure of Ideas (New York: The New Ameri-
can Library, 1933), p.235.
17 According to him, "the word perceive is, in our common usage, shot
through and through with the notion of cognitive apprehension. So is the word
apprehension, even with the adjective cognitive omitted." "Science and the Mod-
ern World, " pp.425-26.
18 See "Science and the Modern World, " pp.426-28.
19 Ibid., p.425.
20 Cited in "Science and the Modern World," p.425.
21 We may recall a text we have already cited elsewhere but is currently
relevant: "…consciousness presupposes experience, and not experience con-
sciousness." Process and Reality, II, i, 6; p.83.
22 Loc.cit.
23 Process and Reality, II, vii, 3; p.246.
24 Loc.cit.
25 According to him, "…the notion of consciousness …in my doctrine is
not a necessary accompaniment." Adventure of Ideas, p.235.
26 Ibid., p.179.
27 In his study of Whitehead's metaphysics, Lowe thinks that "…con-
sciousness is no basic category for him, because it is so far from being essential to
every drop of experience in the cosmos, that it is not even present in every human
experience." Victor Lowe, "Whitehead's Metaphysical System," Process Philoso-
phy and Christian Thought, p.6.
28 Process and Reality, II, vii, 3; p.247.
29 Alfred North Whitehead, Symbolism, Its Meaning and Effect (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), p.16.
30 See Adventure of Ideas, p.177.
31 Loc.cit.
32 Against the conviction of the said modern thinkers, he held the view
that "the basis of experience is emotional." Ibid., p.178.
33 Process and Reality, II, vii, 3; p.246.
34 Ibid., III, ii, 1; p.361.
35 Alfred North Whitehead, "Religion in the Making," Alfred North White-
head, An Anthology, pp.511-512.
36 It would have been very helpful to our understanding of his position if
Whitehead had given an example which is close to ordinary experience concerning
this 'simple physical feeling'. If one considers a related example he has given in
Process and Reality in the section focused on the Theory of Feelings one may
note the difficulty of illustrating this theory:
Our perceptual feelings feel particular existents; that is to say, a physi-
cal feeling, belonging to the percipient, feels the nexus between two
other actualities, A and B. It feels feelings of A which feel B, and feels
feelings of B which feel A. It integrates these feeling, so as to unify their
identity of elements. These identical elements form the factor defining
the nexus between A and B, a nexus also retaining the particular diver-
sity of A and Bin its uniting force. Ibid., III, i, 9; p.351. See a longer but
still abstract exemplification in III, i, 6; pp.345-46.
The elaboration by William A. Christian, highly regarded for his interpre-
tation of Whitehead's metaphysical thinking, is hardly helpful since, like White-
head, his illustration was equally abstract i.e. in terms of feelings A and B, and
datum X. See William A. Christian, An Interpretation of Whitehead's Metaphysics
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), pp.130-38.
37 Adventure of Ideas, pp.180-181.
38 Ibid., p.178.
39 Loc.cit. Hartshorne should have critically noted that Whitehead failed
to see that just as there is 'bad' passivity, there is also 'good' passivity.
Tomas G. Rosario, Jr. 105
40 In his effort to make the notion of prehension intelligible to his readers,
Whitehead was willing to say that "the realities of nature are the prehensions in
nature, that is to say, the events in nature." Whitehead, "Science and the Modern
World," p. 429. Bold underscoring is mine.
41 See Adventure of Ideas, p.178.
42 "Each process of appropriation of a particular element is termed a pre-
hension." Process and Reality, III, i, 1; p.335.
43 Loc.cit.
44 See "Science and the Modern World," p.426.
45 Process and Reality, I, ii, 2; p.35. In his Adventure of Ideas, Whitehead
acknowledged his indebtedness to F. H. Bradley (author of Essays on Truth and
Reality, and On Our Knowledge of Immediate Experience) for the threefold fac-
tors which are constitutive of the prehensive process:
In accordance with this doctrine of Bradley's, I analyze a feeling (or
prehension) into the 'datum,' which is Bradley's 'object for me,' into the
'subjective form,' which is Bradley's 'living emotion,' and into the 'sub-
ject,' which is Bradley's 'me.' Adventure of Ideas, p.232.
46 See Adventure of Ideas, p.178.
47 "Science and the Modern World," p.428.
48 Whitehead explained the subject-object structure of the process of
prehension in the following manner:
Thus subject and object are relative terms. An occasion is a subject in
respect to its special activity concerning an object; and anything is an
object in respect to its provocation of some special activity within a
subject. Such a mode of activity is termed a 'prehension'. Adventure of
Ideas, p.178.
49 Process and Reality, I, ii, 2; p.35.
50 Certain passages refer to this distinction of grades or levels of entities
and the corresponding subjective form in their prehensive activities:
For the subjective form of a simple physical feeling does not involve
consciousness… Process and Reality, III, ii, 1; p.362.
It is evident that adversion and aversion…only have importance in the
case of high-grade organisms. They constitute the first step towards
intellectual mentality, though in themselves they do not amount to con-
sciousness. Ibid., III, iii, 4; p.388.
The subjective form will only involve consciousness when the 'affirma-
tion-negation' contrast has entered into it. Ibid., III, iv, 3; p.399.
51 Adventures of Ideas, p.233.
52 Ibid., p.185.
53 This interpretation is supported, I think, by the following text in Pro-
cess and Reality:
But the subjective form is the immediate novelty; it is how that subject is
feeling that objective datum. There is no tearing this subjective form
106 Prajñâ Vihâra
from the novelty of this concrescence. III, i, 10; p.354. concrescence. III, i,
10; p.354.
54 See Adventure of Ideas, p.186.
55 Process and Reality, III, ii, 1; p.362.
56 Adventure of Ideas, p.234.
57 Whitehead made the following reference to Bradley on the notion of
feeling:
Bradley uses the term Feeling to express the primary activity at the
basis of experience. It is experience itself in its origin and with the
minimum of analysis. The analysis of Feeling can never disclose any-
thing lying beyond the essence of the occasion of experience. Ibid.,
p.232.
58 "As used here the words 'individual' and 'atom' have the same mean-
ing…" Adventure of Ideas, p.179.
59 "Science and the Modern World," p.426.
60 Whitehead attributed the error of Berkeley partly to the
"…overintellectualism of philosophers…" Ibid., p.423.
61 See Adventure of Ideas, p.179.
62 This is Whitehead's view of the role of knowledge in experience:
All knowledge is conscious discrimination of objects experienced. But
this conscious discrimination, which is knowledge, is nothing more
than an additional factor in the subjective form of the interplay of sub-
ject with object. Loc.cit.
63 For instance, in the later part of his exposition of the main teachings of
Bradley regarding the notion of Feeling, to which he agreed in general, Whitehead
clearly identified the notion of feeling with the notion of prehension: "In accor-
dance with this doctrine of Bradley's, I analyze a feeling [or prehension] into the
‘datum,’ which is Bradley’s ‘object before me,’" Loc.cit.
64 We may cite the passage describing the exact equation of the terms
prehension and event: "But the word event just means one of these spatio-tempo-
ral unities. Accordingly, it may be used instead of the term 'prehension' as meaning
the thing prehended." "Science and the Modern World," p.429.
65 Process and Reality, I, ii, 2; p.35. Cf. II, I, 1; pp.65-66.
66 Adventure of Ideas, p.235.
67 See Process and Reality, I, ii, 2; p.35; also II, I, 1; p.66.
68 See Adventure of Ideas, p.235.
69 Process and Reality, III, i, 10, p.353.
70 "A feeling is a component in the concrescence of a novel actual entity."
Process and Reality, III, I, 10, p.355.
71 According, in fact, to Whitehead, "…perhaps we never consciously
discriminate one simple physical feeling in isolation. But all our physical rela-
tionships are made up of such simple physical feelings, as their atomic bricks."
Process and Reality, III, ii, 1, p.362.
Tomas G. Rosario, Jr. 107
72 Whitehead's view resonates with our ordinary experience when he said
that "…the subjective form of a simple physical feeling does not involve con-
sciousness, unless acquired in subsequent phases of integration." Loc.cit.. In the
same location, he also said that "consciousness originates in the higher phases of
integration and illuminates those phases with the greater clarity and distinctness."
Loc.cit.
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Richard Mc Keon, 1941."Metaphysics," The Basic Works of Aristotle. New York:
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St.Thomas Aquinas. 1963. Summa theologiae. Translated by Blackfriars. New
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___________________, 1960. Process and Reality. New York: Harper & Row
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___________________, 1961. "Science and the Modern World," Alfred North
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108 Prajñâ Vihâra