“I push and the world pushes back. If I am struck, I feel the presentational immediacy of pain constructed by my nerves and brain, but I experience that pain with and arising out of the physical causal energy of what strikes me. A flying rock carries physical force, and that force is the ground of my sensory experience of the impact. I experience the pain with and because of that causal energy.

The world and I causally engage each other in each moment. My body arises out of this web of causal relations and my mind arises out of the causal interactions of my body. In each moment, I experience myself–through perception in the mode of causal efficacy–as arising out of that causal web.  That, Whitehead so persuasively argues, is why we all believe in causation. We believe in causation because we experience it in every moment of our becoming and experience ourselves in each moment as being caused by that past world. We cannot help but believe, at a deep level, what we experience in each moment of our existence.”

Quote: C. Robert Mesle, Process-Relational Philosophy, An Introduction to Alfred North Whitehead

Illustration: Hive by Shannon Elliot, Collage, gouache, graphite and digital.

Tags:causationperceptionphilosophyprocess philosophyshannon elliotwhitehead