Question: What did Whitehead feel was necessary regarding basic assumptions in metaphysics?
Answer: people need to continually re-imagine their basic assumptions about how the universe works if philosophy and science are to make any real progress

Question: What was Whitehead's opinion of metaphysical investigations?
Answer: Whitehead regarded metaphysical investigations as essential to both good science and good philosophy

Question: What do philosophers do, in Whitehead's view?
Answer: make metaphysical assumptions about how the universe works

Question: Assumptions of how the universe works are difficult to see precisely because of what?
Answer: they remain unexamined and unquestioned

Question: What did Whitehead ask people to reimagine in order for philosophy to make progress?
Answer: basic assumptions about how the universe works

Question: What did Whitehead regard as essential to good science and good philosophy?
Answer: metaphysical investigations

Question: What Cartesian concept did Whitehead believe to be erroneous?
Answer: reality is fundamentally constructed of bits of matter that exist totally independently of one another

Question: What theory did Whitehead prefer to the Cartesian concept?
Answer: event-based or "process" ontology in which events are primary and are fundamentally interrelated and dependent on one another

Question: How did whitehead define "experience"?
Answer: He used the term "experience" very broadly, so that even inanimate processes such as electron collisions are said to manifest some degree of experience

Question: How did Descartes' distinguish types of existence?
Answer: two different kinds of real existence, either exclusively material or else exclusively mental

Question: How did Whitehead identify his system of metaphysics?
Answer: "philosophy of organism"

Question: What idea states that reality is fundamentally constructed of bits of matter?
Answer: Cartesian idea

Question: Whitehead rejected the Cartesian idea in favor of what?
Answer: an event-based or "process" ontology

Question: Whitehead believed instead of matter existing independently of each other, it did what?
Answer: interrelated and dependent

Question: Whitehead believed that reality should be regarded as what?
Answer: experiential

Question: Whitehead's system as "philosophy of organism" became widely known as what term?
Answer: process philosophy

Question: How did Whitehead define the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness"?
Answer: By assuming that enduring objects are the most real and fundamental things in the universe, materialists have mistaken the abstract for the concrete

Question: What basic concepts did Whitehead believe were questionable?
Answer: "quality", "matter", and "form"

Question: Why did he believe those concepts were inaccurate?
Answer: These "classical" concepts fail to adequately account for change, and overlook the active and experiential nature of the most basic elements of the world.

Question: How did Whitehead classify what is usually seen as an individual person?
Answer: a continuum of overlapping events

Question: How did Whitehead refer to the combination of a person's separate experiences?
Answer: a "society" of events

Question: What are the concepts quality, matter, and form considered?
Answer: "classical" concepts

Question: Concepts such as quality, matter, and form fail to account for what?
Answer: change

Question: What concepts overlook the experiential nature of basic elements?
Answer: quality", "matter", and "form"

Question: What does Whitehead call experiences that are progressively connected?
Answer: society

Question: Instead of being a single person, what does Whitehead view a person as?
Answer: continuum of overlapping events

Question: What did Whitehead believe were essentially the only things that truly exist?
Answer: discrete "occasions of experience" that overlap one another in time and space, and jointly make up the enduring person or thing

Question: Regarding the idea that individuals or objects don't fundamentally change, what terms can be used to describe what an object or individual actually is?
Answer: "defining essence" or a "core identity"

Question: In that line of thinking, how are changes described?
Answer: qualitative and secondary to their core identity

Question: The idea that people are unchanging and stay the same even through changes is considered what?
Answer: defining essence

Question: In Whitehead's cosmology, what are the only things that fundamentally exist?
Answer: occasions of experience

Question: Where do occasions of experience overlap?
Answer: time and space

Question: Instead of having an enduring essence, what does Whitehead believe?
Answer: all things flow"

Question: In Whitehead's view, identities do not define people, but what?
Answer: people define identities

Question: Why did Whitehead think people continued to subscribe to materialistic thinking?
Answer: it is easy and convenient to think of people and objects as remaining fundamentally the same things

Question: What did Whitehead believe regarding factors that limit people's understanding of his concepts?
Answer: should not prevent people from realizing that "material substances" or "essences" are a convenient generalized description of a continuum

Question: What did Whitehead believe was one of the biggest reasons materialistic thinking endured?
Answer: limitations of language

Question: What did Whitehead state about the belief that a person is exactly the same from moment to moment?
Answer: it is not philosophically or ontologically sound

Question: Why couldn't each moment of each person's life be given a different proper name?
Answer: limitations of language

Question: What did Whitehead believe was a culprit in maintaining a materialistic way of thinking?
Answer: limitations of language

Question: Whitehead's main philosophy on humans changing is what?
Answer: each thing is a different thing from what it was a moment ago

Question: What is the general materialistic view of an object?
Answer: Each object is simply an inert clump of matter that is only externally related to other things

Question: How the fundamental concept of matter influence people to view objects?
Answer: The idea of matter as primary makes people think of objects as being fundamentally separate in time and space, and not necessarily related to anything

Question: What is Whitehead's belief regarding the importance of relations?
Answer: in Whitehead's view, relations take a primary role, perhaps even more important than the relata themselves

Question: What is the materialistic view of matter in relation to other objects?
Answer: It sees every object as distinct and discrete from all other objects.

Question: What is another issue that Whitehead had with materialism?
Answer: it obscures the importance of relations

Question: What obscures the importance of relations according to Whitehead?
Answer: materialism

Question: What does Materialism see each object as?
Answer: distinct and discrete

Question: How is each object related to other things?
Answer: externally

Question: How does Whitehead characterize anything that exists?
Answer: in some sense nothing more and nothing less than the sum of its relations to other entities – its synthesis of and reaction to the world around it

Question: How does he describe what makes something real?
Answer: A real thing is just that which forces the rest of the universe to in some way conform to it

Question: In Whitehead's thinking, what could be said about something that has no effect on any other person or object?
Answer: if theoretically a thing made strictly no difference to any other entity (i.e. it was not related to any other entity), it could not be said to really exist

Question: What did Whitehead believe about the concept of relations in the context of defining an entity?
Answer: Relations are not secondary to what a thing is, they are what the thing is.