Most psychology begins with a distinction between organism and environment, where the two are implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) conceptualized as flipsides of a skin-severed space. This paper examines that conceptualization. Dewey and Bentley's (1949) account of firm naming is used to show that psychologists have, in general, (1) employed the skin as a morphological criterion for distinguishing organisms from backgrounds, and (2) equated background with environment. This two-step procedure, which in this article is named the morphological conception of organism, is (...) shown to inform the writings of the well-known psychologist B. F. Skinner. A review of difficulties with the morphological conception is followed with a review and preliminary integration of four attempts at an alternative conception of organism, and thus environment. Together, these four attempts converge on an analysis of living systems as transdermal (through and across skin) processes only within which organism and environment are distinguishable as complementary phases. The notion of a biological total process, or bioprocess, is employed to clarify this alternative analysis, in which an organism is an ongoing organization rather than a skin-bound body. (shrink)

This transdisciplinary doctoral thesis presents various theoretical, methodological and empirical approaches that together form an ecological approach to the study of social sciences. The key argument follows: to understand how sustainable behaviours and cultures may emerge, and how their development can be facilitated, we must further learn how behaviours emerge as a function of the person and the material and social environment. Furthermore, in this thesis the sustainability crises are framed as sustain-ability crises. We must better equip our cultures with (...) abilities to deal with the complexity and uncertainty of socio-ecological systems, and use these cultural skillsets to survive in and adapt to an increasingly unpredictable world. This thesis employs a plurality of ecological social sciences and related methodologies—such as ecological psychology, ecological rationality and agent-based modelling—to enlighten the question of how the collective adoption of sustainable behaviours can be leveraged, particularly by changing the affordances in the material environment. What is common to these ecological approaches is the appreciation of ‘processes’ over ‘products’: we must understand the various processes through which sustainable forms of behaviour or decision-making emerge to truly locate leverage points in social systems. Finally, this thesis deals extensively with uncertainty in complex systems. It proposes that we can look to local and traditional knowledge in learning how to deal adaptively with uncertainty. (shrink)

To combat the ecological crisis, fundamental change is required in how humans perceive nature. This paper proposes that the human-nature bifurcation, a metaphysical mental model that is deeply entrenched and may be environmentally unsound, stems from embodied and tacitly-held substance-biased belief systems. Process philosophy can aid us, among other things, in providing an alternative framework for reinterpreting this bifurcation by drawing an ontological bridge between humans and nature, thus providing a coherent philosophical basis for sustainable dwelling and policy-making. Michael Polanyi's (...) epistemology can further help us understand these environmentally-oriented tacit processes of knowing, and also provide a basis for the political and educational implementation of process-philosophical insights, particularly via the nudging of mental models. (shrink)

This essay sets forth the decisive notions and postulates of process philosophy in Process Philosophy and Social Thought, edited by John B. Cobb, Jr. and W. Widick Schroeder. After commenting on the circumstances in which process philosophy came to be a major option among philosophical theologians, I provide some amplification of those notions and postulates. Then, selecting material from the eighteen articles in the volume, I offer several critical assessments of the process viewpoint and its relation to science and to (...) the contemporary call for liberation. (shrink)

The most constructive response to the crisis in moral theory has been the revival of virtue ethics, an ethics that has the advantages of being personal, contextual, and, as this paper will argue, normative as well. The first section offers a general comparative analysis of Confucian and Whiteheadian philosophies, showing their common process orientation and their views of a somatic self united in reason and passion. The second section contrasts rational with aesthetic order, demonstrating a parallel with analytic and synthetic (...) reason, and showing that rule-based ethics comes under the former and virtue ethics under the latter. The third and final section discusses a Confucian-Whiteheadian aesthetics of virtue, focusing on love as the comprehensive virtue. The principal goal of the paper is to propose that an appropriation of Confucian virtue ethics will enhance the otherwise slow development of a Euro-American process ethics. (shrink)

Isabelle Stengers’ cosmopolitical proposal is an influential attempt by a European philosopher to transform the burdensome legacy of Western thought. Reconsidering her comprehensive engagement with the cosmology of the British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, this article reveals two concepts as foundational to Stengers’ cosmopolitics: civilization and commerce. While not usually associated with a critical political theory, in her development of what we call a commercial political ontology, Stengers explores the modes of inheriting these ostracized notions. By tracing the (...) genealogy of this political ontology back to Pericles’ first explicit defense of persuasion as a requisite for civilization, we argue that Pericles’ famous funeral oration provides the structure for Whitehead’s cosmology, and, ultimately, Stengers’ cosmopolitics. As such, we understand her cosmopolitical proposal as a dress rehearsal of a funeral eulogy for bourgeois society. (shrink)

A silent revolution has occurred in the most highly industrialized countries. This is the utilization and acceptance of various healing practices (which for convenience has often been labeled as “alternative medicine,” a.k.a. “whole person healing”) by an enormous fraction of the population. Moreover, this population cohort is much wealthier and better educated than the average citizen. It is no longer possible for this generation in the Western world to ignore or denigrate the medicine and healing practices used by hundreds of (...) millions in other cultures. What is obviously needed is a retreat from the innate skeptical reaction of much of the stance of western medicine, the development of a mutual respect for other cultures and their achievements, and a genuinely open, scientific and wholistic approach to the issues, especially in this context, to other practices of whole person healing. (shrink)

One can extrapolate from the art of language instruction to discover methods applicable across the disciplines in higher education. The paradigm presented by language instruction is applicable throughout the arts and sciences. If cultivated—and there are institutional pressures working against it—such an art can impact the languages and codes of the individual disciplines so as to advance the research mission of scholars in those fields; it can also favor the interrelationships between the disciplines. How the student learns another language (L2) (...) is comparable to the process of learning a scientific discipline. (shrink)

Constructivism is at the heart of a pedagogical philosophy going back to Vico, whose view of the interrelationship of the arts and sciences sought to reconstitute the classical paideia. The Vichian idea that human beings can only know the truth of what they themselves have made has theoretical and practical consequences for Vico's pedagogy and view of the university. Vico's ideas on education are extended in the modern period by such thinkers as Cassirer, Piaget and Bateson. At the basis of (...) Cassirer's pedagogical philosophy is his theory of the symbol, the symbol being a universal and transcendent modality in culture. The result of this unifying theory is that symbolism, which is pervasive across the disciplines, provides a moral and ethical means for integrating communication about teaching. Cassirer's thought is compatible with Piaget's, which emphasizes the pluralism of experience and the role of dynamic learning in the construction of meaningful order. Piaget's constructivism assumes that an operational bridge exists to link together the hard sciences, the human sciences, and the historical disciplines. This systems view of epistemological matters is similar in many respects to the one advanced by Gregory Bateson, which is explored in the paper's final section. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between three elements—personality, character, and script—to interpret the idea of someone's identity. A common way to deal with this relationship is in terms of a duality, but a tripartite analysis works better. The article relies heavily on the thought of Charles Hartshorne, with the aid of Simone Weil and Charles Sanders Peirce.

This article is prompted by some ideas from Robert S. Brumbaugh and Alfred North Whitehead, in particular. Four different views of experienced time are considered as well as four different conceptions of the practice of life that are the implications of these views of time. Further, four different famous works of literature are considered in the effort to understand these views of time and their implications for the practice of life.

In the Harvard lectures of 1924–1925, Alfred North Whitehead proposed that our various intellectual activities amounted to an attempt to understand the world and our experiences through hypothesizing. He explained the importance of hypothesis in scientific research and extended the idea of hypothesis to the philosophical method called “speculative philosophy.” For Whitehead, philosophy was the attempt to formulate general hypotheses that can transcend disciplines. This paper is intended to explore the possible influence of Victorian philosophers on Whitehead. Victorian philosophers such (...) as John Herschel, William Whewell, and John Stuart Mill discussed the role of hypothesis in scientific discovery. Was Whitehead aware of this tradition? Was he influenced by it? This article indicates that Whitehead at least indirectly inherited the Victorian idea of hypothesis, notably in the thought of Whewell, as mediated by Charles Darwin. (shrink)