Philosophy of Organism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
Any material not supported by sources may be challenged and removed at any time. This article has been tagged since January 2007.

Philosophy of Organism or Organic Realism is how Alfred North Whitehead described his metaphysics. It is now known as process philosophy.

Central to this school is the idea of concrescence. Concrescence means that "we" (con prefix) cre- (create) scence (sense, or the "scene," that which is seen), the present is given by a consense of subjective forms. We are multiple individuals, but there are also multiple individual agents of consciousness operant in the construction of the given. Marvin Minsky calls this the "society of mind" in his book Society of Mind.

Whitehead's "subjective forms" compliment "eternal objects" in his metaphysical system. Eternal objects are Plato's archetypal forms. In Process and Reality, Whitehead proposes that his 'organic realism' be used in place of classical materialism.