Ian Thompson
Member
The story about Whitehead is that he lost his son Eric very late in WWI, and wanted to know whether he survived death. So part of his philosophical theory after the war was to see if he could make a view that was compatible with physics, but still allowed some kind of postmortem survival.I would love to follow a thread titled "what minds actually are!". I suggest there will be lively opinions at Skeptiko.
Stapp does well when he referenced A. N. Whitehead in some of his papers.
In the story where there is blind but tactile observation of an elephant, no one speaks of the elephant's point of view. When addressing theories of mind, Whitehead's treatment of its ontologies, is always tantalizing. I suggest that the elephant (a reification of mentality in this case ) was made the most uncomfortable by the intimate gropings of Whitehead. When I read him - it seems he always has something almost in hand.
Here is Stapp gleaning ideas from Whitehead
In fact, the theory he ended up with only allowed the most meagre influence of mind (or God!) on nature. Since all 'actual entities' are physical, they are not really enough for survival at all. And when he talks about potentiality (which, if like 'power' might give us an idea about minds) he means 'merely potential', which is essential equivalent to 'merely possible'. Even in his physics, he does not have any idea about active powers or potentials.
Yet, the mere fact that Whitehead had a theory that integrated mind and nature (however inadequate it may be) is enough to make people like Henry Stapp and Ken Wilber look back to him when they try to begin to make theories that connect mind and nature, and would otherwise be stuck completely.