Philosophy of Organism or Organic Realism is how Alfred North Whitehead

Alfred North Whitehead

Alfred North Whitehead, OM FRS was an English mathematician who became a philosopher. He wrote on algebra, logic, foundations of mathematics, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics, and education...

 described his metaphysics

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...

. It is now known as process philosophy

Process philosophy

Process philosophy identifies metaphysical reality with change and dynamism. Since the time of Plato and Aristotle, philosophers have posited true reality as "timeless", based on permanent substances, whilst processes are denied or subordinated to timeless substances...

.

Central to this school is the idea of concrescence. Concrescence means growing together (com/con from Latin for "together", crescence from Latin crescere/cret- grow), the present is given by a consense of subjective forms. We are multiple individuals, but there are also multiple individual agents of consciousness operant in the construction of the given. Marvin Minsky

Marvin Minsky

Marvin Lee Minsky is an American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence , co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy.-Biography:...

 calls this the "society of mind" in his book Society of Mind

Society of Mind

The Society of Mind is both the title of a book and the name of a theory of natural intelligence as written and developed by Marvin Minsky.-Minsky's model:...

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Whitehead's "subjective forms" complement "eternal objects" in his metaphysical system; eternal objects being entities not unlike Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

's archetypal Forms. In Process and Reality

Process and Reality

In philosophy, especially metaphysics, the book Process and Reality by Alfred North Whitehead sets out its author's philosophy of organism, also called process philosophy...

, Whitehead proposes that his 'organic realism' be used in place of classical materialism

Materialism

In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...

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