Substance, Material, and the Enduring Self

One of the most important ideas in A.N. Whitehead’s Science and the Modern World is the recognition of the limitations of scientific materialism. Critics have often held that materialism is self-defeating since it struggles to account for non-materialist events such as thoughts, ideas, consciousness and the self. However, what Whitehead offers is a different critique, mainly that what appears to be solid, material stuff is merely the enduring pattern of events. In this way Whitehead gives a more satisfactory explanation for ideas and, more importantly, the self. The challenge for the scientific materialist is considerable when it comes to providing an explanation for beliefs, ideas and subjective experiences. Alvin Plantinga makes this point in his Against Materialism, asking just what, exactly, a belief is for a materialist (here). For most materialists, all that exist are physical, material processes and interactions. On that view, a belief would have to be something material. In other words, there would have to be a spot in the brain, perhaps, wherein one finds the belief that, say, p is true. Whitehead’s claim is not entirely different, but deals with the very fundamental question at the heart of the distinction between science and philosophy.

The questions which science and philosophy seek to answer are often the same, but the very nature of the two approaches limits and directs the way in which the questions are answered. Whitehead explains that one’s answer to the subject-object distinction is central to one’s ability to account for ultimate reality (Whitehead, 145-148). In this way Descartes’ rationalism proved untenable since it reduced all material things (objects) to essentially mental constructs of the subject. The problem for philosophers of this persuasion was explaining the uniformity of mental constructs once they had undermined the reality of the objects. The empiricists, of course, upheld the reality of the object by means of the experience with those objects by individuals. This epistemological debate is well-known, but Whitehead’s point is that neither side can adequately ground their position since rationalism ignores the regularity of experience and empiricism undermines reason and rationality.

Part of the reason that the debate no longer runs on the quite the same lines is because of the merging of science and philosophy. One of the most troubling questions for both camps was the recognition of the self. How a purely mechanical being could experience self-awareness or how a purely rational mind could believe in the questionable existence of a body and a self situated in the world needed answering. Whitehead’s explanation of the body can be understood at least partially as the detection of the chemistry and biology working together to express a totality and report to the being as a single being (Whitehead, 148). The body, he says, is not the mere collection of its parts, it is an entity all its own. It is also not separate from the universe of events which Whitehead elaborates upon elsewhere. Crucially, the body is able to reference itself in relation to the world because “it knows the world as a system of mutual relevance, and thus sees itself mirrored in other things” (Whitehead, 148-149).

Whitehead clarifies further that there is a distinction to be made between what he calls bodily patterns and bodily events (Whitehead, 149). The event is simply that which is expressed or uniquely existing, but is a part of the pattern which endures. This is essentially his explanation for a person’s being able to understand the self and for the self to endure from one moment to another, which is a requisite for meaningful experience. In other words, on the materialist view, bodies are made of material, and that material is unthinking and does not endure. However, experience tells us that we comprehend our bodies and maintain our notion of self, even as it relates to different space-time scenarios.

In Plantinga’s paper, he deals with the idea of having specific body parts, or organs, or cells replaced, while experiencing the enduring self no less. A prosthetic leg, or a even a new heart, it seems, does not change who a person is, or how the person endures. It is logically possible, then, that every cell could be replaced in a sufficiently fast manner so as to not lose functionality, and yet the self should endure. On Whitehead’s account, this is no surprise. Fundamental particles are events, which adapt as they become parts of patters, so that an electron may behave one way in one scenario, and another in a different scenario. That is, at the particle level, there is not a sense of specificity until the particles or events are attached or joined to a pattern, where they then enter into the pattern and become part of the enduring pattern, even as they are an event unto themselves.

What Whitehead is able to do is show the inadequacy of the materialist view from a position of process, where Plantinga and others have done so from a position of immaterialism. The disagreements therein are beyond the scope of discussion here, but it is important to see where Whitehead’s ideas fit into the notion of ideas, the mind and the enduring self. Although Whitehead does not here elaborate on the implications for consciousness, subjective mental states, qualia or the soul, one can employ the process ideas in filling the explanatory gaps left by a materialist position which leads to both the untenable rationalism and naive empiricism of modern philosophy and science. The interaction between parts and whole, events and patterns is, even if found wanting in other areas of analogy, particularly apt in addressing the problems of material, substance and the enduring self.