Process Philosophy Essays

Paul Cecil's Personal Pages
Process Philosophy - essays

Process Philosophy and Whitehead
I have a particular interest in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. At the heart of this is a complex metaphysics of 'process' in which the idea of "matter" being the primary stuff of existence is rejected. In its place "events" are treated as the basis for reality, with each entity being at the centre of its own creative and creating universe. Reality is embedded in the process of coming into being, of making something new. Reality is never static, the solidity of objects being our perception of an already completed past. The future is literally ours to create. And the present is the centre of our emergence into being. The following essays are some of my work in the area. I also maintain the Jisc process-philosophy e-mail list.
The Priority of God: speculating on First Being explores the implications of a primary being (aka God). It takes a non-theistic view of primacy and explores the question mainly via the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. 114kb pdf Retrieving the status of dream: towards a Process revision of Freud looks at the Freudian theory of dream through the lens of process metaphysics. The essay draws on similarities in descriptive method, notably with regard to the drawing together of diverse elements into a final unity. The sharp difference between Freud and Whitehead is that the former is forever looking back to the past; Whitehead sought to push all endeavour into an endlessly creative future. His clarion call was "Creative advance". 74kb pdf Inter-subjectivity and process categorization: co-agency in a unitive paradigm is the less than helpful title I gave my Masters dissertation. The abstract probably isn't much clearer: Using the Bible as a paradigmatic foundation, the paper discusses the notion of personhood within the context of Whitehead’s process metaphysics. Special attention is paid to the establishment of inter-subjective relationship, and the argument is made for co-agency within a unitive paradigm as a necessary condition of our understanding of ourselves as persons. In the development of a co-agentive process model, consideration is given in particular to Feuerbachian projection and the notion of the self as a project. Rather more succinctly, the paper argues for human inter-relationship and co-agency and treats the self (and God) largely as constructs. It's generally 'person-centred' in its approach. 159k pdf Farrer, Feuerbach and Process - the divine human as paradigm was my first formal (i.e. assessed) paper as a postgrad. Basically an untutored attempt at Christology, it hints at the lines of thought I am now following in positing the idea of human projects gaining self-sustaining agency. 88kb pdf Language, conflict and coherence in the Bible. This essay explores the language of the Bible, and in particular the relationship between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. It contrasts the communal focus of the former with the personalist principle embedded in the latter. 90kb pdf A Speculation on Time. This is a short extract from a piece in I wrote for the book 'Painful But Fabulous'. It discusses the notion of a 'thickness of time' in a process philosophy context. 40kb pdf A Response to Joseph Bracken’s "Prehending God in and through the World", published in Process Studies pp. 358-364, Vol. 29, Number 2, Fall-Winter, 2000. The short paper is a response to Joseph Bracken's paper Prehending God in and through the World. Both papers web-published at religion-online Changing Cultures in Organizations: A Process of Organic-ization. This is my paper on process and change management, presented at the 2003 St Andrew's Conference and published on-line by Concrescence. You'll need an Acrobat Reader to open these files. Free download available here. The following is a selection of projects from numerous publications dating back to the early '80s... Books Flickers of the dreamachine (ed.), Codex, 1996 A collection of writings on the work of artist Brion Gysin. I edited the collection and contributed two articles. Ratio:3 - Media Shamans (ed.), Temple Press, 1991 Series and volume editor. Authors included American poets Ira Cohen, Angus Maclise and Gerard Malanga Ratio:3 - Trans:mediators (ed.), Temple Press, 1992 Series and volume editor. A collection of writings by three transmedia artists Journals and papers A response to Joseph Bracken's "Prehending God in and through the World", Process Studies 29.2, Fall 2000 Organic-ization: a theory of change in organizations. Conference paper, St Andrews July 2003. Forthcoming publication in Concrescence 'The Metaphysics of Sigils', Soft Skull Press, NY, 2002 Taking the fear out of peer observation: enhancement of assurance?, (with S Foster-Ogg). Conference presentation, Celebrating Diversity (ed Patrick Palmer), University of Brighton, 1999.

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