Whitehead, emergence, decision
Whitehead’s Ontological Principle (“actual entities are the only reasons” — PR 24; “there is nothing which floats into the world from nowhere” — PR 244) would seem to disallow strong emergence. It is thus parallel to Galen Strawson’s attack on strong emergence, even without necessarily assenting to Strawson’s reductionism. The consequence, for Strawson, is panpsychism. The consequence, for Whitehead, goes somewhat further: it means that every entity/occasion must make its own decision. The non-determinism of the future is thus not opposed to, but a direct result of, the insurpassable insistence of causality-from-the-past in the form of “stubborn fact”.
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