Variations on Process Metaphysics

There exist parallels between the Buddhist concept of Indra’s Net and the notion of moral perspective-taking. According to Alfred North Whitehead’s process metaphysics, the aesthetic continuum of nature is an organization of perspectives, whereby each occasion is akin to a Leibnizian monad, or metaphysical point, each functioning as a living mirror that reflects the entire universe from its own unique standpoint as a microcosm of the macrocosm. The metaphysical perspectivism underlying Whitehead’s ecological concept of nature along with a brief consideration of how Whitehead’s perspectivism illuminates the Japanese aesthetic concept of nature can be visualized by the poetic metaphor of Indra’s Net. Whitehead’s Leibnizian perspectivism was reformulated by George Herbert Mead, and later by Lawrence Kohlberg and Jürgen Habermas and can be integrated into an ethical procedure for moral perspective-taking, whereby free moral agents learn to put themselves into the perspectives of others in the community.

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Mind Outside Brain

10.1093/oso/9780198801764.003.0005 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Francis Heylighen ◽

Shima Beigi

Keyword(s):

Distributed Cognition ◽

Extended Mind ◽

Self Organization ◽

Sense Making ◽

Intentional Stance ◽

Holistic View ◽

Elementary Reactions ◽

Process Metaphysics ◽

Mechanistic Worldview ◽

Eastern Philosophies

We approach the problem of the extended mind from a radically non-dualist perspective. The separation between mind and matter is an artifact of the mechanistic worldview, which leaves no room for mental phenomena such as agency, intentionality, or experience. We propose to replace it by an action ontology, which conceives mind and matter as aspects of the same network of processes. By adopting the intentional stance, we interpret the catalysts of elementary reactions as agents exhibiting desires, intentions, and sensations. Autopoietic networks of reactions constitute more complex super-agents, which exhibit memory, deliberation and sense-making. In the case of social networks, individual agents coordinate their actions via the propagation of challenges. The distributed cognition that emerges cannot be situated in any individual brain. This non-dualist, holistic view extends and operationalizes process metaphysics and Eastern philosophies. It is supported by both mindfulness experiences and mathematical models of action, self-organization, and cognition.

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