Jorge Luis Nobo

I

Recently I have argued in "Experience, Eternity, and Primordiality: Steps Towards a Metaphysics of Creative Solidarity"(EES)--- for the need, first, to distinguish, within the one concrete and evolving universe, what I term the eternal and non-eternal universes and, second, to posit the eternal universe as being the necessary condition for the non-eternal universe, and as being both the necessary and sufficient condition for the origination of a primordial actuality. Moreover, that there is an ever growing multiplicity of actualities other than the primordial one is, I have also argued, itself the result of a decision made by the primordial actuality-a decision enabled, but in no way necessitated, by the nature of the eternal universe. To this eternal universe I attribute four interdependent properties: creativeness, extensiveness, entensiveness, and determinativeness-this last property itself analyzable into a multiplicity of forms of determinativeness. Each property is shown to require the remaining three so that the eternal universe is in itself nothing but the indissoluble integral unity of all four properties.

  The eternal universe is the necessary condition of the non-eternal universe because the latter is constituted by actualities whose becoming, being, and interconnectedness presuppose and manifest the creativeness, extensiveness, entensiveness, and determinativeness of the former. All actualities are begotten by, and find their emplacement in, the eternal universe. Since they remain everlastingly embedded in the eternal universe, wherever the latter is manifested, they too are also manifested. Thus, the entire antecedent universe-in part eternal, in part non-eternal-functions in the becoming of every actuality, or what is the same, contributes to its determinacy. But each actuality also contributes to its own determination; and this is possible because the begetting of each partially determinate actuality is the total universe incarnating and individualizing itself, and hence its eternal properties, in a new creation. The new creation thus owns an extensive region that is at once its standpoint of interconnectedness and its entensional point of view, and owns a measure of creativity whereby it ingresses the eternal forms it chooses to complete the determination of its nature.

The metaphysics of creative solidarity-as I call the position just sketched- evolves partly from my interpretation and development of Whitehead's philosophy, as presented in Whitehead's Metaphysics of Extension and Solidarity (WMES). It follows Whitehead's lead in at least five respects.

First, it abstracts away from the idiosyncratic properties of human experience and towards properties essential to any moment of experience, whether human or non-human. Thus it ultimately construes human experience as only a special, extremely complex case of a very generalized, but metaphysically viable, conception of experience. Second, it adopts the working hypothesis that all final individual actualities have the metaphysical properties of concrete moments of experience. Third, it explores the broader hypothesis that insofar as the universe is something that becomes it consists of the becoming, being, and interdependence of concrete moments of experience, each such moment a discrete individual with a distinct identity, yet each contributing some aspect or other of its own nature to the nature of every other such moment. Fourth, it seeks to ground what the universe is by way of becoming in what the universe is by way of eternity-that is, in those aspects of the universe that are presupposed by everything that becomes but which are themselves real without ever having become. Finally, fifth, it emphasizes the dynamic and cumulative nature of experience: experiencing is a creative process of becoming and what becomes is the self-same experience as an everlasting created product or determinate being. (EES 9)

But the metaphysics of creative solidarity results also from my commitment to what I refer to as the experientialist principle of onto-epistemic limitation, one of several principles I believe should guide and constrain the formation and evaluation of all concepts and theories in the field of speculative philosophy. This particular principle requires the simultaneous restriction of the scope of reality and the scope of knowledge to experience, to the in principle experienceable, and to the necessary conditions of all experience. In its light, speculative metaphysics-one of three subfields of speculative philosophy: speculative cosmology and speculative anthropology being the other two-becomes the theory of the necessary conditions of all experience.

Whatever is thus necessary, I hold, must be both ontologically presupposed by, and manifested in, all instances of experiencing. But since all instances of experiencing are instances of ontologically basic processes of becoming, this means that whatever is a necessary condition of all experiencing must be real without having ever become, and must be supersessionally prior to the experiencings, or ontologically basic becomings, in which it is manifested. Any such necessary condition of experience I term an eternal reality. The indissoluble integral unity of such realities is what I have referred to as the eternal universe. I also refer to it as the ontogenetic matrix. In turn, I use the term existential matrix to refer to the special functional unity exhibited by the creativeness, extensiveness, and entensiveness of the eternal universe. For these three properties, unlike the forms of determinativeness, are not reproducible; moreover, they are wholly involved in the becoming of every actuality, whereas only a small selection of eternal forms are thus involved. The existential matrix gets its name from the fact that it is presupposed by all existents, whether eternal or non-eternal.

The existential matrix corresponds to what Whitehead thought of as the ultimate, and to which he often referred as the creativity. But the ontogenetic matrix, not the existential matrix, is the ultimate reality posited by the metaphysics of creative solidarity. Its theory explains the integral unity of the eternal universe and thereby why the functioning of any one of its co-eternal properties necessarily involves the other three properties. Hence, it also explains why no actuality can fail to be creative, extensive, entensive, and determinate.

The theory of the ontogenetic matrix, together with the theory of primordiality, is an attempt to develop and improve on Whitehead's theory of the formative elements of the temporal world. Whitehead explicitly identified three formative elements: the creativity, the multiplicity of eternal objects, and, in effect, God's primordial nature (RM 88). But in WMES I argued, on the basis of substantial textual and systematic considerations, that metaphysical extension and metaphysical envisagement are also formative elements of the temporal world. I there argued, in addition, that the term creativity, as used by Whitehead, has to be systematically understood as shorthand for an ultimate reality that is at once creative, extensive, and envisaging-the reality that I refer to as the existential matrix.

In turn, the theory of the existential matrix is an attempt to clarify and develop the metaphysical insights that Whitehead attempted to capture-unsuccessfully, I think-in his account of creativity as the underlying substance of the universe. Thus, the theory is also an attempt to avoid the confusions and inconsistencies of Whitehead's account by making explicit four important distinctions:

First, it clearly distinguishes between, on the one hand, the creativeness of the universe as a pure potency for becoming and, on the other, the multiple manifestations of that potency in the creative processes by which actualities come into being. Second, it explicitly explains and consistently adheres to a distinction between the universe's individualizing manifestations and its individualized manifestations: the former are macroscopic processes of transition and constitute the only creative activity that can be genuinely attributed to the universe itself; whereas the latter are microscopic processes of concrescence and constitute the only creative activity that can be genuinely attributed to actual subjects. But, for each actuality, the latter manifestation emerges for the former as its outcome and intrinsic supersessor. Transition, in three supersessionally successive phases, creates the initial objective content and the initial conformal subjective forms of the novel actuality; these given phases then condition, but do not determine, the supersessionally subsequent phases of concrescence. Thus, each individualizing manifestation, or genuine universal activity, begets a novel, but incomplete, subject and thereby gives way to an individualized manifestation essentially belonging to the begotten subject.

A third explicit distinction made by the current theory is between, on the one side, the eternal extensive continuum as a pure potency for the coming into being of determinate, structured, interconnected regions of extension, and, on the other side, the several continua of determinate, or actualized, extension that result from the becoming of actualities embodying contiguous regions. Finally, a fourth explicit distinction is between the entensiveness of the universe, which is, roughly, the latter's sensitivity to its own states, and the multiple individualizations of that sensitivity in the becoming of actualities, in the intentionality of their subjective forms, and in the transcendent referentiveness of their immanent objective data. (EES 17-18)

In EES, I argue for the theory of the existential matrix as an essential component of the metaphysics of creative solidarity. In WMES, on the other hand, I argue at length for the theory of the existential matrix as implicit in and required by Whitehead's metaphysics. My concern in the present essay is to examine Whitehead's muddled but instructive efforts, primarily in Science and the Modern World, to convey some of the metaphysical insight that are coherently captured only in the theory of the existential matrix.

II

In the metaphysics of creative solidarity, I posit envisagement, or what I call entensiveness, as belonging to the existential matrix, whereas in SMW Whitehead posits envisagement as belonging to creativity, or to what he refers to as the underlying eternal energy, or activity, of the universe (SMW 105-06). My divergence from Whitehead on this point requires justification. But it might be well first to explain the very important notion of envisagement.

Aside from my own efforts, the importance of envisagement has been little noted in the secondary Whiteheadian literature. It has been mistakenly interpreted as an exclusive feature of God's primordial experience. It certainly plays a role in the primordial nature, but only because it must play a role in every becoming, or, equivalently, in every experiencing. But what is thus manifested is an eternal aspect of the universe, an aspect presupposed by, and individualized in, each instance of becoming or experiencing. To put it in Whiteheadian terms, the universe as a whole-including its eternal objects, its metaphysical extension, and its attained actualities-can take part in the becoming of a new occasion only to the extent that it is taken into account, or envisaged, by the transcendent creative activity begetting the new occasion's dative phases. This is why Whitehead, in Science and the Modern World, spoke of each individualizing manifestation of creativity as an envisaging activity (SMW 105, 176-78). It is also why he there listed the multiplicity of eternal objects, the community of attained actualities, and, in effect, God's primordial nature as the three termini of envisagement. But envisagement is also a necessary aspect of every individualized manifestation of creativity, for each subjective concrescence must taken into account its given factual conditions, its possibilities for attainment, and the phase-products of its own ongoing decisions.

In WMES, I have provided a detailed, but still incomplete, account of how envisagement is presupposed in every phase of an occasion's becoming. I am here concerned only with the envisagement's overall role in Whitehead's conception of the ultimate reality posited by the organic philosophy. The thing to notice is that, for the many to become one and be increased by one, the creative universe must take into account, or envisage, the existence of every new disjunctive plurality of completely attained creatures before it can create, relative to each new disjunction, the dative phase of a new creature, which dative phase, since it is a finite extensive region containing within itself the reproduction, or causal objectification, of the plurality in question, is the impure potency for that plurality of attained creatures to be synthesized into the constitution and subjective experience of a novel occasion. Thus, envisagement, creativity, and extension are all presupposed as aspects of that ultimate reality whereby the many become one and are increased by one.

This conclusion, however, is obscured by Whitehead's claim that the three termini of the eternal envisagement-the multiplicity of eternal objects, God's primordial nature, and the community of attained actualities-are attributes of the eternal activity (SMW 177-78, 105-06). For that claim seems to require that the ultimate be the envisaging creativity. However, there is, I contend, no legitimate sense in which any of the three termini of envisagement could be an attribute of the creativity. Let us consider each such terminus in turn.

If the multiplicity of eternal objects were an attribute of the creativity, each eternal object would be a character of the creativity. Whitehead, however, claims that the creativity is without a character of its own (PR 47). Therefore, the multiplicity of eternal objects cannot be an attribute of the creativity.

The same conclusion must be reached in regards to the ever-expanding community of attained actualities. For the creativity must remain formless even as attained actualities accumulate in the wake of its individual manifestations. But neither the expanding community, nor any one of its actual constituents, could be an attribute of the creativity without thereby lending to it its own determinate character. Hence, the community of actual entities cannot be an attribute of the creativity.

It may be objected that Whitehead does say that each attained actuality is "universalized into a character of creativity" (PR 249). However, all Whitehead means by this remark is that, as causally objectified, each attained actuality is a determinate character of every actuality that is supersessionally later than itself. As a character of a later occasion, the attained actuality is derivatively a character of the individualized creativity belonging to that later occasion. In other words, only an individualized manifestation of the creativity can be construed as being characterized by past actualities, and then only in the sense that they characterize the actual occasion embodying and owning that manifestation.

This is why Whitehead also says, in effect, that the creativity is characterizable only through its individualized embodiments (PR 10). For him, "the character of the creativity is found in the analysis of the creature" (IS 243). Thus, when Whitehead says that "it is the function of actuality to characterize the creativity" (PR 344), he does not mean that the former characterizes the latter as objectified occasions and unrestrictedly ingressed eternal objects characterize a given actuality; instead, he means that the creativity-the creativeness of the eternal universe, in my terms-can be understood and described only in terms of the actualities that either condition or embody its individualized manifestations (PR 10-11; 46-47; 344). Clearly, then, the sense in which creativity is characterized by actuality is not of the sort that would permit us to interpret the community of actual entities as being a true attribute of creativity.

Finally, if the community of actualities cannot be properly construed as a genuine attribute of the creativity, there is no possibility that God's primordial nature could be so construed; for God, too, is an actual entity. In fact, the characterization of the creativity by God differs from its characterization by temporal actualities only in that the former characterization is primordial. God's aboriginal conceptual nature, as Whitehead understands it, is the primordial individualized manifestation of the ultimate creativity, and is thereby a condition for all subsequent individualized manifestations, including those belonging to the successive stages of God's own consequent nature. Thus, the primordial nature is objectively a character of each temporal actuality and formally a character of every stage of God's concrete existence. By reason of the primordial nature, then, God is the only actuality characterizing, in one way or another, every individualized embodiment of the creativity. Nonetheless, though the primordial nature truly characterizes every actuality, it is a character of the creativity only in the sense that it is a character of the actualities embodying the creativity's ongoing individualized manifestations. The primordial nature is never a character of the creativity considered in itself, divorced from its embodiments. It follows that God's primordial nature is not truly an attribute of the creativity.

The fact that the termini of envisagement cannot be coherently interpreted as genuine attributes of creativity does not rule out the possibility of envisagement belonging to the creativity itself. It does show, nonetheless, that the creativity is poorly suited to play the role of an ultimate substance underlying all existents as their matrix. It shows, in addition, that Whitehead's attempt to conceive of the ultimate as a substance in which attributes inhere is hopelessly inconsistent.

The inconsistency is particularly evident when Whitehead tries to convey his conception of the ultimate as follows:

The general activity is not an entity in the sense in which occasions or eternal objects are entities. It is a general metaphysical character which underlies all occasions, in a particular mode for each occasion. There is nothing with which to compare it: it is Spinoza's one infinite substance. Its attributes are its character of individualization into a multiplicity of modes, and the realm of eternal objects which are variously synthesized in these modes. Thus eternal possibility and modal differentiation into individual multiplicity are the attributes of the one substance. In fact each general element of the metaphysical situation is an attribute of the substantial activity. (SMW 177)

Taken by itself, and excluding its last sentence, this passage gives the impression that the substantial activity is held to have only two attributes: the multiplicity of eternal objects and the interlocked plurality of actual occasions. But no sooner has Whitehead completed this passage than he goes on to identify a third general element of the metaphysical situation: the primordial nature of God (SMW 177-79). This further element of the metaphysical situation he interprets, of course, as a third attribute of the one ultimate substance (SMW 178).

Now, since the three attributes Whitehead explicitly identifies are termini of the envisagement, what are we to make of the envisagement itself- Is not the envisagement also a general element of the metaphysical situation- Surely, this question must be answered in the affirmative. For without their being taken into account, or envisaged, the three attributes could never determine or condition the individual modes of the substantial activity. They are relevant because they are envisaged, or entended; they can influence the becoming of an occasion only because they are taken into account in that becoming.

As a matter of fact, there can be no doubt that Whitehead is well aware of the need to posit an eternal envisagement as a general element of the metaphysical situation; for, just before the passage under surveillance, he writes:

Each individual activity is nothing but the mode in which the general activity is individualized by the imposed conditions. The envisagement which enters into the synthesis is also a character which conditions the synthesizing activity. (SMW 177)

Moreover, in the discussion of God as a third attribute, Whitehead makes it evident that the envisagement conditions the synthesizing activity because it, too, is individualized in each mode or occasion. In effect, God's primordial nature is necessary to explain "the acceptance or rejection of what is before the envisaging mode of activity" (SMW 178). Accordingly, even though Whitehead never explicitly identifies it as such, the eternal envisagement is an additional general element of the metaphysical situation and a fourth attribute of the substantial activity. Envisagement is the attribute by which all attributes are taken into account.

But the attributes of the substantial activity cannot be limited to four. If the textual considerations and arguments I presented in WMES are at all persuasive, the continuum of pure extension must be interpreted as yet another element of the metaphysical situation. How else are we to conceive of something that is presupposed by the becoming of every concrete actuality, but which does not itself become- For every concrete actuality realizes, embodies and structures a proper region of extension, but the extension of each actuality's region is eternal. Moreover, it is only by reason of the metaphysical properties of extension that any two actualities are at once mutually transcendent and mutually immanent. In other words, actualities are discrete-each is formally outside the standpoints of the others-because of the separativeness of extension; and actualities are interlocked-each is objectively inside the standpoints of the others-because of the modality of extension. Accordingly, given that the solidarity of actual entities is for Whitehead a metaphysical feature of the universe, we must conclude that he cannot consistently avoid positing the infinite continuum of eternal extension as a fifth attribute of the substantial activity.

It would now seem, therefore, that the substantial activity has five attributes if it has any. However, given that the three termini of envisagement cannot be construed as genuine attributes of the substantial activity, what is the point of construing the eternal creativity as the ultimate substance of the universe- Indeed, it may well be the case that Whitehead intended the phrase "substantial activity" to mean not that the ultimate creativity is a substance, but, rather, that the ultimate substance is creative. Textual and doctrinal support for the phrase having the latter meaning is by no means lacking.

In the first place, the creativity in itself (what I term the creativeness of the universe, or its pure creative potency), as opposed to any one of its individual manifestations, is not truly an activity. In itself, the creativity is merely the ultimate ground, or metaphysical potency, for creative activities of becoming. It is, to use Whitehead's more apt phrase, "the underlying energy of realization" (SMW 105). This "underlying eternal energy," to use yet another of Whitehead's apt phrases (SMW 105), manifests itself in the creative activities by which actual entities come to be; but the eternal energy is not to be equated with, much less reduced to, its manifestations. In short, the underlying eternal energy is presupposed by, and manifested in, all creative activities, but it is not itself a creative activity. Accordingly, since no real creative activity occurs independently of the becoming of actual entities, there is no such thing as an eternal creative activity that could function as the ultimate substance of the universe.

In the second place, if all Whitehead means by substantial activity is that the ultimate substance is creative, then the contrast between macroscopic transition and microscopic concrescence is sufficient to ground the distinction between a creative activity belonging to the ultimate substance itself and a creative activity belonging to an individualized mode of that substance. For the creative activity involved in a process of transition does not belong to the subject begotten by that process, whereas an already begotten subject does own the creative activity involved in its process of concrescence. Thus, each creative activity of transition can be consistently attributed to the ultimate substance itself, to the creative universe (PR 344), whereas each creative activity of concrescence can be coherently construed as an individualized mode of the one creative substance. Accordingly, one important advantage of conceiving the ultimate-or, better, the existential matrix-as a creative substance is that we can then construe the processes of transition as exhaustively constituting "the underlying substantial activity of individualization," while at the same time construing each process of concrescence as an "individualized activity"(SMW 123). Also, we can then understand why "each individual activity is nothing but the mode in which the general activity is individualized by the imposed conditions" (SMW 177). The imposed conditions, of course, are the causal objectifications and conformal feelings, both physical and conceptual, produced by a process of transition, and determined by the envisaged, or entended, state of the universe relative to the origination of that transition.

With the assumption that the ultimate reality is a creative substance, then, the phrase "substantial activity," and each of its variants, gains a meaning consistent with most, though not all, of Whitehead's pronouncements on the nature of the ultimate reality. For example, with this assumption, the substantial activity of transition can be understood as not only begetting an incomplete actuality, but also as informing it with aspects of other actualities-aspects which are then united by the individualized activity of concrescence (SMW 123). Part of my point, in this regard, is that we have to differentiate the eternal energy's individualizing manifestations from its individualized manifestations. The former are processes of transition and constitute the only creative activity that can be genuinely attributed to the ultimate substance itself; whereas the latter are processes of concrescence, each an individual subject existing for itself as a creative activity of self-determination. My main point, however, is that an individualizing manifestation, or genuine substantial activity, at once begets a novel, but incomplete, subject and gives way to an individualized manifestation essentially belonging to the begotten subject. But the latter manifestation emerges for the former as its outcome and intrinsic supersessor. It is precisely for this reason that individual subjects can be understood as "the individualizations or modes of Spinoza's one substance" (SMW 124). I would prefer to say, however, that they are individualizations of the concrete, creative universe.

In the third place, positing the ultimate as a creative substance has the advantage of putting the eternal creativity on equal footing with the other eternal elements of the general metaphysical situation. In other words, freed from having to play the role of substance, the creativity or eternal energy of realization can then be understood as being but one of several factors of the general metaphysical situation, each factor a property of the eternal universe. This way of understanding the universe's creativeness is by no means foreign to Whitehead. In fact, it is practically explicit in AI. There, while discussing the metaphysical situation from which an occasion of experience originates, Whitehead says:

The initial situation includes a factor of activity which is the reason for the origin of that occasion of experience. This factor of activity is what I have called �ecreativity.'(AI 179)

Since it is only one of several eternal factors of the general metaphysical situation, the creativity, we must conclude, is itself only an attribute of the ultimate substance or, in my terms, a property of the existential matrix or, speaking more concretely, of the ontogenetic matrix. But the ontogenetic matrix is nothing other than what the universe is by way of eternity.

This last conclusion, of course, is already implicit in the description of the ultimate as a creative substance. But making it explicit exhibits yet another advantage of conceiving the ultimate substance as creative instead of conceiving the creativity as ultimate substance. For we no longer need to worry about the sense in which the three termini of envisagement identified by Whitehead are attributes of the creativity. The multiplicity of eternal objects, the community of actual occasions and the primordial nature of God are attributes not of the eternal creativity, but of a reality that is eternally creative, extensive and entensive-the one integral universe, in part eternal, in part non-eternal. Its non-eternal attributes are God and the community of temporal actualities.

III

The preceding doctrinal and textual considerations provide strong support for my contention that Whitehead intended the phrase �esubstantial activity' to mean not that the creativity is the ultimate substance, but rather that the ultimate substance is creative. That is not to deny that this phrase and the term �ecreativity' are often used by Whitehead in ways suggesting, or even implying, that the creativity is itself the ultimate substance. Perhaps these misleading uses are occasioned by Whitehead's desire to ensure that the ultimate reality of his philosophy not be thought of as an inactive stuff, passively receiving forms and externally related entities by reason of some power beyond itself (PR 46). If so, the emphasis on the ultimate's creative aspect has had the unfortunate consequence of obscuring its equally important extensive and entensive aspects. But whatever the reason for Whitehead's confusing pronouncements on the nature of the ultimate, the fact remains that the creative solidarity of all realities presupposes that creativeness, extensiveness, and entensiveness are alike indispensable aspects of the one eternal matrix of all existents. Together with the eternal forms of determinativeness, they constitute the ontogenetic matrix of all becoming-the eternal universe presupposed by all actualities, primordial or non-primordial.