The Baha'i Studies Listserv On 11/26/2011 1:04 AM, Gary Selchert wrote: > I'm unfamiliar with Bhaskar, but quite familiar with Whitehead. How > would you say Bhaskar differs from Whitehead and why do you prefer his > descriptions of reality over Whitehead's?
Whitehead's views are, IMO, too speculative. I refer to them in one of my books: ------------------ On the other hand, in process philosophy, as developed by Alfred North Whitehead and others, essences of being are considered to be essences of becoming. Although the substances or objects around us appear, from our perspectives, to be tangible or concrete, they are, to process philosophers, the products of human experience. Only God is permanent and eternal. Process thought <http://links.religionsnet.com/process.html>, an umbrella term, adds all or part of: process theology, constructive postmodernism, theopoetics, Anisa, symbolic interactionist theory, process New Thought, elisionism, the holomovement, and so forth. Process philosophy is, from one point of view, the polar opposite of nominalism. The reality of essences has generally been denied by nominalists. To them, essences are no more than names, conventional categories, or classification systems. Although the medieval founders of Western nominalism were devout Roman Catholics, secularism is partially rooted in nominalist disconnectedness. Process thought, however, lies on the other end of the philosophical spectrum. Essences not only exist. They are in constant motion. Because creativity is the rule of existence, reality is forever in flux. Since essences are unknowable and depend upon the Will of God, their state of change or permanence is unrevealed. Although the divine Essence is, of course, a Being, whether any other essences are beings is a mystery. Speculations on these subjects, while interesting, are of little use. In my opinion, since we are agnostic about essences, the Best Beloved discussed them with a beautiful critical, or representational <http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/%7Eslehar/Representationalism.html>, realism, not nominalism. Essences are not, as in nominalism, just names. They are inner realities which are experienced, indirectly, by feeling, or inwardly touching, their attributes. ----------------- In sociology, the main impact of process philosophy has been on the theory of symbolic interactionism. One of the first symbolic interactionists, Charles Horton Cooley (University of Michigan) was an objective idealist (not a realist). He felt that society was a process which existed entirely in the minds of its members. --- Regards, Mark A. Foster, Ph.D. 29 domains: http://markfoster.net Two books: http://bahaifaith.info Clinical: http://fosterservices.com __________________________________________________ You are subscribed to Baha'i Studies as: mailto:[email protected] Unsubscribe: send a blank email to mailto:leave-621663-27401.54f46e81b66496c9909bcdc2f7987...@list.jccc.edu Subscribe: send subscribe bahai-st in the message body to [email protected] Or subscribe: http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/all_forums/subscribe?name=bahai-st Baha'i Studies is available through the following: Mail - mailto:[email protected] Web - http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/?forum=bahai-st News (on-campus only) - news://list.jccc.edu/bahai-st Old Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] New Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
