PROCESS METAPHYSICS AND THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM

In terms of current philosophical classifications, Whitehead is an exponent of ‘process philosophy’. Philosophical denominations are difficult to pin down to a precise definition, but in this case there is a clear-cut criterion for distinguishing between process and non-process thinkers. Common sense takes it for granted that all activities and happenings are to be traced back to some pre-existing entity. It was Peter, we say, who let our aunt's precious cup fall on the ground; and the falling is not a ghostly floating occurrence: it is the falling of the aunt's cup. In our ordinary conceptual scheme, permanent things have priority over events. They are, to use P. F. Strawson's apt terminology, the ‘basic particulars’.

Whitehead does not question that the common-sense view is pragmatically useful, but he takes a revisionary approach when questions of basic ontology are at stake. At a metaphysically fundamental level, he posits processes rather than things as the building blocks of reality. The idea that the category of process is ontologically fundamental is not easy to understand. What kinds of processes are basic? How is their nature to be discovered? How are permanence and stability to be accounted for in a world whose ultimate constituents are ongoing process-units? What kind of worldview can be constructed around this central intuition? How are we to evaluate its validity?

Before considering Whitehead's answers to these questions in the following chapters, a word is in order concerning one major difficulty that any process philosophy has to face. Process metaphysics effects a radical alteration of our ordinary conceptions. Such modes of thought are very old, however, and have left an indelible mark upon our language. A truly revisionary metaphysics must therefore not solely provide a new conceptual scheme, but also a new language in which to articulate it. As Whitehead puts it: