mesmericmonad

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Ordering pizza and going on a drive with my boyfriend tonight while we start Neverland/Zagreus let's gooo

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I think my somatic morphospace idea is possible...

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Whiteheads suggestion of the coherence between width of contrast and depth of intensity is even more interesting in light of the fact that gravitational fields develop morphological features which are spherical

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"The attainment of a peculiar definiteness is the final cause which animates a particular process; and its attainment halts its process, so that by transcendence it passes into its objective immortality as a new objective condition added to the riches of the definiteness attainable, the 'real potentiality' of the Universe." -Alfred North Whitehead 'Process and Reality' p. 223

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"The actual entity as described by the morphology of its satisfaction is the actual entity 'spatialized,' to use Bergson's term. The actual entity, thus spatialized, is a given individual fact actuated by its own substantial form. Its own process, which is its own internal existence, has evaporated, worn out and satisfied; but its effects are all to be described in terms of its satisfaction. The effects of an actual entity are its interventions in concrescent processes other than its own. Any entity, thus intervening in processes transcending itself, is said to be functioning as an 'object.' According to the fourth Category of Explanation it is the one general metaphysical character of all entities of all sorts, that they function as objects. It is this metaphysical character which constitutes the solidarity of the universe." -Alfred North Whitehead 'Process and Reality' p. 220

"The satisfaction of each actual entity is an element in the givenness of the universe: it limits boundless, abstract possibility into the particular real potentiality from which each novel concrescence originates. The 'boundless, abstract possibility' means the creativity considered solely in reference to the possibilities of the intervention of eternal objects, and in abstraction from the objective intervention of actual entities belonging to any definite actual world, including God among the actualities abstracted from."

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"An actual entity is a process in the course of which many operations with incomplete subjective unity terminate in a completed unity of operation, termed the 'satisfaction.' The 'satisfaction' is the contentment of the creative urge by the fulfillment of its categorical demands. The analysis of these categories is one aim of metaphysics" -Alfred North Whitehead 'Process and Reality' p. 219

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"One grows tired of jelly babies, Castellan" -4th Doctor

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"You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: they don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views, which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering."

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This book sounds amazing. More work needs to be done on putting Whitehead and Marx into conversation

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Chapter 10 in Part 2 of Process and Reality by Alfred North Whitehead. Probably the singular most exciting and sophisticated passages I've ever read

Whitehead here introduces two poles of identity philosophy that runs through the Western tradition: movement or stasis. dynamic becoming or static being.

Whitehead further examines the notion of "flux" and the relationship of movement in the universe to consciousness with brief remarks on Plato, Hume, Aristotle, Descartes, and Bergson

Whitehead suggests that Western philosophy discovered but never made conscious of the discovery that there are actually two kinds of fluency in the world: the microcosm and the macrocosm. The flowing inward of the Many into the unique, novel One, and the flowing outward of the One into the Many. Concrescence is the name for this process of subjective novelty and unification within the diverse Universe

"Concrescence is the name for the process in which the universe of many things acquires an individual unity in a determinate relegation of each item of the Many to its subordination in the constitution of the novel One." So far as an actual occasion is analyzable into component parts, this includes a process of feeling constituting (1) the actual occasions felt; (2) the eternal objects felt; (3) the feelings felt; (4) Its own subjective forms of intensity culminating in a satisfaction: "This final unity is termed the tsatisfaction.' The satisfaction is the culmination of the concrescence into a completely determinate matter of fact. In any of its antecedent stages, the concrescence exhibits sheer indetermination as to the nexus between its many components.

This multistage process is broken down even more by Whitehead into (i) the responsive phase and (ii) the supplemental stage, that leads us finally to the satisfaction. In the responsive phase, "the phase of pure reception of the actual world in its guise of objective datum for aesthetic synthesis. In this phase there is the mere reception of the actual world as a multiplicity of private centres of feeling, implicated in a nexus of mutual presupposition."

Whereas in the supplemental phase, "the many feelings, derivatively felt as alien, are transformed into a unity of aesthetic appreciation immediately felt as private. This is the incoming of appetition, which in its higher exemplifications we term vision. In the language of physical science, the scalar form overwhelms the original vector form: the origins become subordinate to the individual experience. The vector form is not lost, but is submerged as the foundation of the scalar superstructure."

In this next part, Whitehead breaks down the supplemental phase into two subphases: (1) aesthetic supplement; and (2) intellectual supplement. As he notes, if both subphases are trivial, the whole transmission of feelings passes through with little modification and augmentation. This part of the Concrescence urges in the dimensional axis of width of contrast and depth of intensity. "There is an emotional appreciation of the contrasts and rhythms inherent in the unification of the objective content in the concrescence" meaning that there is an actual felt sensation of differentiation of sense data with a gradation of consciousness of its vector origin. This elicits the second subphase: An eternal object realized in respect to its pure potentiality as related to determinate logical subjects is termed a 'propositional feeling' in the mentality of the actual occasion in question. The consciousness belonging to an actual occasion is its sub-phase of intellectual supplementation, when that sub-phase is not purely trivial. This sub-phase is the eliciting, into feeling, of the full contrast between mere propositional potentiality and realized fact."

Thus each actual entity, although complete so far as concerns its microscopic process, is yet incomplete by reason of its objective inclusion of the macroscopicprocess. It really experiences a future which must be actual, although the completed actualities of that future are undetermined. In this sense, each actual occasion experiences its own objective immortality.

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On Leela and Romanas conversation, I also wanted to add that I can see how it would appear as if Leela was the uneducated one compared to the "correct" Romana, but I think the writing actually lends Leelas worldview much more credit and even validity. Leelas use of narrative is directly associated with the strong connection she has with her bodily feelings and the types of extremely intimate sensory apparatuses that clearly constitute her physiology. Romanas' dependency on explaining scientific doctrines from a purely materialist standpoint is directly associated with the safety and sophisticated control she has over her brain.

And while Romanas natural strength certainly suits her in dealing with Time Lord politics and the complexities of Time Travel, Spirit and elsewhere clearly shows that Leelas strengths are what helps them survive, adapt, and consider entirely new pathways to take. I loved the tanks part because of how, on the one hand, Romana seemed to enjoy the ability to really feel into the world around her, and on the other hand, Leela hated the over-intellectualizing and wished to return back to her comfortable sensory apparatus. Romana then starts speaking almost in narrative! I think the writing here really ends up going back to favor Leela in their earlier conversation about evolution.

After all, we can frame it as "There must be a guiding hand for these pips to turn inward" or "The fruit must have some sort of spirit in order to understand the beauty of its taste" or we can simply ask what the ongoing, subjective process of this particular entity means for the constitution of the other entities around it. Either way, Leela is actually appealing to a mature thought experiment on Time itself: No entity in the Universe is ever simply what it is in that moment. Part of its being is its inclusion into the datum of other entities in the universe. Whitehead would say:

Whitehead puts this in more philosophical terms, but Leela is trying to explain to Romana the *exact* same thing!! I take the "Spirit" at work in her logic to be what Whitehead terms "each actual occasions experience" of "its own objective immortality". Everything goes beyond what it itself is.

I really, really loved 2.2. I will just end with two more quotes that I hope make the connection even clearer

"One person cannot become Many without consequence" -Leela

"The Many become One and are increased by One" -Alfred North Whitehead

I just finished Spirit. I wish I could write out many more thoughts than I can do rn. This was some of my favorite Doctor Who content overall tbh. Leela and Romana's differences in personality, beliefs, and logic on full display are exactly what I didn't know I needed. Leelas unique and curious role as an outsider in these high-stakes political games was always a factor playing into her character through the series, but it was really the focal point here in a great way. Romana and Leela both represent radical ends of an irl split in epistemic beliefs. I guess people would see Leela as "superstitious," but I really don't think anything she said even comes close to superstition. It isn't religious or fantastical to suggest that there's something "more than" simply biological fact, and everything Leela brings up ("The fruit IS beautiful"; "How does a bird fly for months to reach its home?") is perfectly compatible with rational metaphysical schemas and certainly with evolution. Narrative-telling is constitutive of humans' biological reproduction. If anything, Romanas insistence on a purely empiricist paradigm over Leelas metaphysical tale only reveals that both are just two sides of the same coin. They are both frameworks to apprehend and predict causal efficacy. They both lead to unique and intense views of how the world operates. But neither is wrong. They're both complimentary.

This comes full circle when the two seem to gain parts of the others' personality, which supports the other side of the coin. Romana suddenly *feels in her body* instead of always in her head. She isn't intellectualizing everything through an analytical lense. Instead, she's really feeling her body for the first time. She probably never could feel the way that oxygen cleans her bloodstream so clearly as she did then. Leela feels uncomfortable with her new intellectual abilities. She isn't relying on the multitude of sense-organs distributed across her body to synthesize the presented data. Instead, she's intellectualizing every wave of information, and her brain organ is perhaps much more hyper-active than it was before. In short, Romanas reliance on a rationalist-empiricist epistemology aligns closely with her *inability* to utilize her sense organs deeply, accurately, and with intimacy. Leelas reliance on the specifically neuromuscular and sensory knowledge allows her a more nuanced interaction with the corporeal landscape around her, but perhaps forbids her from constructing a systematized methodology of propositional logic in the way Romana could.

Neither side of this coin is "better" and in fact us humans have the task of delicately tending to both parts of our makeup, both sets of data-gathering tools. The metaphysician and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead essentially investigates the foundations of Leela and Romanas personalities in his magnum opus Process & Reality (1929). P&R is one of my favorite works ever and to see the Gallifrey series so brilliantly convey the gradation between his categories of "withness of the body" and "presentational immediacy" through the relationship between Leela and Romana has been an absolute delight. Amazing series

"You think of your body as a machine, but it is not. How can such a big mind be so narrow?" -Leela

"But we must—to avoid 'solipsism of the present moment'—include in direct perception something more than presentational immediacy. For the organic theory, the most primitive perception is 'feeling the body as functioning.' This is a feeling of the world in the past; it is the inheritance of the world as a complex of feeling; namely, it is the feeling of derived feelings. The later, sophisticated perception is 'feeling the contemporary world.' Even this presentational immediacy begins with sense-presentation of the contemporary body. The body, however, is only a peculiarly intimate bit of the world. Just as Descartes said, 'this body is mine'; so he should have said, 'this actual world is mine.' My process of 'being myself' is my origination from my possession of the world." -Alfred North Whitehead

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I just finished Spirit. I wish I could write out many more thoughts than I can do rn. This was some of my favorite Doctor Who content overall tbh. Leela and Romana's differences in personality, beliefs, and logic on full display are exactly what I didn't know I needed. Leelas unique and curious role as an outsider in these high-stakes political games was always a factor playing into her character through the series, but it was really the focal point here in a great way. Romana and Leela both represent radical ends of an irl split in epistemic beliefs. I guess people would see Leela as "superstitious," but I really don't think anything she said even comes close to superstition. It isn't religious or fantastical to suggest that there's something "more than" simply biological fact, and everything Leela brings up ("The fruit IS beautiful"; "How does a bird fly for months to reach its home?") is perfectly compatible with rational metaphysical schemas and certainly with evolution. Narrative-telling is constitutive of humans' biological reproduction. If anything, Romanas insistence on a purely empiricist paradigm over Leelas metaphysical tale only reveals that both are just two sides of the same coin. They are both frameworks to apprehend and predict causal efficacy. They both lead to unique and intense views of how the world operates. But neither is wrong. They're both complimentary.

This comes full circle when the two seem to gain parts of the others' personality, which supports the other side of the coin. Romana suddenly *feels in her body* instead of always in her head. She isn't intellectualizing everything through an analytical lense. Instead, she's really feeling her body for the first time. She probably never could feel the way that oxygen cleans her bloodstream so clearly as she did then. Leela feels uncomfortable with her new intellectual abilities. She isn't relying on the multitude of sense-organs distributed across her body to synthesize the presented data. Instead, she's intellectualizing every wave of information, and her brain organ is perhaps much more hyper-active than it was before. In short, Romanas reliance on a rationalist-empiricist epistemology aligns closely with her *inability* to utilize her sense organs deeply, accurately, and with intimacy. Leelas reliance on the specifically neuromuscular and sensory knowledge allows her a more nuanced interaction with the corporeal landscape around her, but perhaps forbids her from constructing a systematized methodology of propositional logic in the way Romana could.

Neither side of this coin is "better" and in fact us humans have the task of delicately tending to both parts of our makeup, both sets of data-gathering tools. The metaphysician and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead essentially investigates the foundations of these differing personalities in his magnum opus Process & Reality (1929). P&R is one of my favorite works ever and to see the Gallifrey series so brilliantly convey the gradation between his categories of "withness of the body" and "presentational immediacy" through the relationship between Leela and Romana has been an absolute delight. Amazing series

"You think of your body as a machine, but it is not. How can such a big mind be so narrow?" -Leela

"But we must—to avoid 'solipsism of the present moment'—include in direct perception something more than presentational immediacy. For the organic theory, the most primitive perception is 'feeling the body as functioning.' This is a feeling of the world in the past; it is the inheritance of the world as a complex of feeling; namely, it is the feeling of derived feelings. The later, sophisticated perception is 'feeling the contemporary world.' Even this presentational immediacy begins with sense-presentation of the contemporary body. The body, however, is only a peculiarly intimate bit of the world. Just as Descartes said, 'this body is mine'; so he should have said, 'this actual world is mine.' My process of 'being myself' is my origination from my possession of the world." -Alfred North Whitehead

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"The Doctor: Was it to do with the voices?

Professor Chronotis: What voices?

The Doctor: Well, when I was on the river, I heard a strange babble of inhuman voices. Didn't you, Romana?

Romana: Yes

Professor Chronotis: Oh, undergraduates talking to each other, I expect. I'm trying to have it banned"

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"yes I do serious research"

The serious research in question:

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Just finished Lies. Omg what a banger!! Romana I and Romana II talking 🤌 K9 dialogue 🤌 Political scheming 🤌

"She calls it the liberalization of the autocracy" has got to be one of my favorite quotes of the series so far. It definitely exposes the position everyone is in. The Time Lord ruling class and State machinery reproduce aristocratic, xenophobic attitudes, and any openness is met with hostility on that basis. On the other hand, the irony is exactly right. It IS an autocracy, and Romanas' (seemingly) ill fated attempts at reform predictably cause inherent tension within the political community. It kind of meaningless nonsense given the context. What a crazy good series. Excited to listen to more today

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I just listened to season 1 of the Gallifrey audio series (just finished A Blind Eye). This is my first time listening through it and I'm absolutely loving it so far! My bf and I recently just started the classic series on the Key to Time arc. Romana very quickly became one of my favorite characters in the entire show, and shot up there with Donna and Martha as one of my favorite companions ever so far.. so I was really looking forward to seeing how she'd develop in the audio series. I absolutely love the political tensions, and it's so interesting seeing Romana take this turn towards a darker personality far more comfortable with the exercise of control than she seemed to be in the TV series. Though I think you see the seeds of this in her acting in The Horns of Nimon. The bits with Narvin are super entertaining. Lastly, I absolutely adore the contrast between Romana and Leela. Leela's personality stands out in the midst of this time boundary crossing political game. I love it. I'm really looking forward to continuing