Subject: "Process Philosophy"
From: "William J. Rapaport" <rapaport@buffalo.edu>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:19:05 -0500 (EST)

CSE Prof. Peter Scott writes:
"Do you think that Whitehead's process philosophy has anything to
contribute to the what-is-CS discussion? It seems to me that giving
ontological primacy to processes over objects gives 'procedures' an
interesting and fundamental perspective as objects of study."

A quick perusal of that well-established philosophical source,
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_philosophy),
brings up some interesting things:

1.
One of W's followers was Charles Hartshorne, who was former UB MTH
Prof. Nicholas Goodman's father-in-law :-)

2.
Some of Alan Turing's ideas are cited as being congenial to those of W.

3.
And W's view that everything is fundamentally experiential has recently
been revived (but without attribution to W, I think) by the British
philosopher Galen Strawson, in:

Strawson, Galen (2006), Consciousness and Its Place in Nature: Does
Physicalism Entail Panpsychism? (Imprint Academic);
http://www.imprint.co.uk/books/strawson.html

I think the connection, if any, certainly merits further investigation.