It took me much longer than I had hoped, but I have finally finished a first draft of my chapter on Whitehead’s notion of God. It’s longer than it should be, and a bit all over the place (digressive) — and yet touches too briefly on a number of things that it would be good to flesh out in greater detail. And I didn’t quite manage to explain how and why Whitehead’s God might be preferable even to Spinoza’s God (its only competitor) for the role of the philosophers’ God, or the atheists’ God. In any case, the God I discern in Whitehead is (as far as I can tell) rather different from the one found in process theology.
For what it’s worth, the article is here (pdf).
I enjoyed the essay (even though it seems to become more about Deleuze than Whitehead? — re: p. 26’s “It might seem, at this point, that I have gone far aï¬eld from the discussion of Whitehead’s notion of God…”), yet I don’t think the three passing references to quantum mechanics (re: collapsing wave function) are relevant or successful. There are a href=”http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/”>ontologically deterministic takes on quantum physics (like Bohm, Bell, etc.) that are actually probably more compatible with Whitehead than Bohr’s quasi-metaphysics. (That is, your phrasings seem to be implying that the “wave function” itself is somehow determining reality, rather than just reflecting outcomes as part of a formal scientific theory.)
Sorry, above should have read:
…There are ontologically deterministic takes on quantum physics (like Bohm, Bell, etc.) that are actually probably more compatible with Whitehead than Bohr’s quasi-metaphysics…
[…]Shaviro has posted another draft chapter, which discusses Whitehead’s God. From the draft chapter’s I have read from Shaviro they are all worth a reading and of high quality[…]