sentence-transformers/squad huggingface dataset:
Passage: This is not to say that Whitehead's thought was widely accepted or even well-understood. His philosophical work is generally considered to be among the most difficult to understand in all of the western canon. Even professional philosophers struggled to follow Whitehead's writings. One famous story illustrating the level of difficulty of Whitehead's philosophy centers around the delivery of Whitehead's Gifford lectures in 1927–28 – following Arthur Eddington's lectures of the year previous – which Whitehead would later publish as Process and Reality:

Question: What is the general opinion of the difficulty level of Whitehead's work in philosophy?

Question: What lectures did Whitehead present in 1927-28?

Question: Under what name were those lectures later published?

Question: Who also struggled to follow Whitehead's writings?

Question: Following Arthur Eddington's lectures, what did Whitehead publish?

Question: When did Whitehead delivery the Gifford lectures?

Question: In all of the western canon, what is Whitehead's work considered?
Passage: However, Mathews' frustration with Whitehead's books did not negatively affect his interest. In fact, there were numerous philosophers and theologians at Chicago's Divinity School that perceived the importance of what Whitehead was doing without fully grasping all of the details and implications. In 1927 they invited one of America's only Whitehead experts – Henry Nelson Wieman – to Chicago to give a lecture explaining Whitehead's thought. Wieman's lecture was so brilliant that he was promptly hired to the faculty and taught there for twenty years, and for at least thirty years afterward Chicago's Divinity School was closely associated with Whitehead's thought.

Question: What affect did Matthews' opinion of the difficulty of Whitehead's works have on his interest in them?

Question: How did many philosophers and theologians at Chicago's Divinity School view Whitehead's work?

Question: What expert on Whitehead delivered a lecture at the school to explain Whitehead's ideas?

Question: What was the result of that lecture?

Question: Who was frustrated in Whitehead's books but still interested?

Question: What school recognized the importance of Whitehead's work?

Question: When was Henry Nelson Wieman invited to the Chicago Divinity school?

Question: Who was invited to the Chicago Divinity school as one of Whitehead's only experts?

Question: What happened after Henry Nelson Wieman gave a lecture about Whitehead?
Passage: Wieman's words proved prophetic. Though Process and Reality has been called "arguably the most impressive single metaphysical text of the twentieth century," it has been little-read and little-understood, partly because it demands – as Isabelle Stengers puts it – "that its readers accept the adventure of the questions that will separate them from every consensus." Whitehead questioned western philosophy's most dearly held assumptions about how the universe works, but in doing so he managed to anticipate a number of 21st century scientific and philosophical problems and provide novel solutions.

Question: How has "Process and Reality" been described?

Question: What did Isabelle Stengers say is the reason that "Process and Reality" is not commonly read and understood?

Question: What effect did Whitehead have on the future of metaphysics?

Question: Which publication is considered the most impressive metaphysical text?

Question: Who thought Process and Reality was little-read because the reader has to separate them from normal thought?

Question: What philosophy in the west was challenged by Whitehead?

Question: What was Whitehead's philosophy able to anticipate for the 21st century?

Question: What was the outcome of anticipating the scientific and philosophical problems Whitehead proposed?
Passage: It must be emphasized, however, that an entity is not merely a sum of its relations, but also a valuation of them and reaction to them. For Whitehead, creativity is the absolute principle of existence, and every entity (whether it is a human being, a tree, or an electron) has some degree of novelty in how it responds to other entities, and is not fully determined by causal or mechanistic laws. Of course, most entities do not have consciousness. As a human being's actions cannot always be predicted, the same can be said of where a tree's roots will grow, or how an electron will move, or whether it will rain tomorrow. Moreover, inability to predict an electron's movement (for instance) is not due to faulty understanding or inadequate technology; rather, the fundamental creativity/freedom of all entities means that there will always remain phenomena that are unpredictable.

Question: What did Whitehead believe regarding creativity?

Question: An entity is a sum of relations, a valuation of them and what else?

Question: Most entities do not have what?

Question: All entities, being unable to predict behavior, are because of what?

Question: Not being able to predict what any entity is going to do is what principle b Whitehead?

Question: Other than the combination of its relations, what else defines an entity?

Question: What did Whitehead believe about an entity's relation to other entities?
Passage: Since Whitehead's metaphysics described a universe in which all entities experience, he needed a new way of describing perception that was not limited to living, self-conscious beings. The term he coined was "prehension", which comes from the Latin prehensio, meaning "to seize." The term is meant to indicate a kind of perception that can be conscious or unconscious, applying to people as well as electrons. It is also intended to make clear Whitehead's rejection of the theory of representative perception, in which the mind only has private ideas about other entities. For Whitehead, the term "prehension" indicates that the perceiver actually incorporates aspects of the perceived thing into itself. In this way, entities are constituted by their perceptions and relations, rather than being independent of them. Further, Whitehead regards perception as occurring in two modes, causal efficacy (or "physical prehension") and presentational immediacy (or "conceptual prehension").

Question: What is the origin of the word "prehension"?

Question: What is a basic description of the theory of representative perception?

Question: What term did Whitehead describe that perception is not limited to the living?

Question: What language does the term "prehensio" come from?

Question: What does the word "Prehensio" translate into?

Question: What entities does the term prehension apply to?

Question: How many modes does perception occur in according to Whitehead?

Question: What is prehension used to define?

Question: What does the term "prehension" signify regarding an entities perceptions and relations?

Question: What did Whitehead state are the two types of perception?
Passage: Whitehead describes causal efficacy as "the experience dominating the primitive living organisms, which have a sense for the fate from which they have emerged, and the fate towards which they go." It is, in other words, the sense of causal relations between entities, a feeling of being influenced and affected by the surrounding environment, unmediated by the senses. Presentational immediacy, on the other hand, is what is usually referred to as "pure sense perception", unmediated by any causal or symbolic interpretation, even unconscious interpretation. In other words, it is pure appearance, which may or may not be delusive (e.g. mistaking an image in a mirror for "the real thing").

Question: How do the senses affect causal efficacy?

Question: What can be said about the accuracy of presentational immediacy?

Question: What is the term for the experience dominating primitive organisms that have a sense for fate?

Question: What is the other term for "pure sense perception"?

Question: What is it called if you mistake a reflection in a mirror for the real thing?

Question: How does Whitehead define causal efficacy?

Question: How does Whitehead define presentational immediacy?
Passage: In higher organisms (like people), these two modes of perception combine into what Whitehead terms "symbolic reference", which links appearance with causation in a process that is so automatic that both people and animals have difficulty refraining from it. By way of illustration, Whitehead uses the example of a person's encounter with a chair. An ordinary person looks up, sees a colored shape, and immediately infers that it is a chair. However, an artist, Whitehead supposes, "might not have jumped to the notion of a chair", but instead "might have stopped at the mere contemplation of a beautiful color and a beautiful shape." This is not the normal human reaction; most people place objects in categories by habit and instinct, without even thinking about it. Moreover, animals do the same thing. Using the same example, Whitehead points out that a dog "would have acted immediately on the hypothesis of a chair and would have jumped onto it by way of using it as such." In this way symbolic reference is a fusion of pure sense perceptions on the one hand and causal relations on the other, and that it is in fact the causal relationships that dominate the more basic mentality (as the dog illustrates), while it is the sense perceptions which indicate a higher grade mentality (as the artist illustrates).

Question: Which concept does Whitehead state is more dominant in a lower mentality?

Question: What is Whitehead's term for the two modes of perceptions combining?

Question: What dominates more basic mentality in symbolic reference?

Question: What does symbolic reference link appearance with?

Question: What does having sense perceptions conclude about a person?

Question: What is the purpose of symbolic reference?

Question: How does Whitehead describe the process of a typical person noticing a chair?

Question: How might an artist view a chair differently than a typical person?

Question: How does Whitehead say a dog may interpret the presence of a chair?
Passage: Whitehead makes the startling observation that "life is comparatively deficient in survival value." If humans can only exist for about a hundred years, and rocks for eight hundred million, then one is forced to ask why complex organisms ever evolved in the first place; as Whitehead humorously notes, "they certainly did not appear because they were better at that game than the rocks around them." He then observes that the mark of higher forms of life is that they are actively engaged in modifying their environment, an activity which he theorizes is directed toward the three-fold goal of living, living well, and living better. In other words, Whitehead sees life as directed toward the purpose of increasing its own satisfaction. Without such a goal, he sees the rise of life as totally unintelligible.

Question: What observation did Whitehead make about life?

Question: What did Whitehead state was the biggest indicator of a higher form of life?

Question: What did Whitehead believe are the goals f life?

Question: What did Whitehead believe was the fundamental purpose of life?

Question: Whitehead observes that life is deficient in what?

Question: What are higher life forms actively engaged in?

Question: How many goals of living is there?

Question: Whitehead sees life as directed towards what purpose?

Question: Without Whitehead's proposed purpose, life would be what?

Question: What was Whitehead's response to questions about why complex life evolved?
Passage: Whitehead's idea of God differs from traditional monotheistic notions. Perhaps his most famous and pointed criticism of the Christian conception of God is that "the Church gave unto God the attributes which belonged exclusively to Caesar." Here Whitehead is criticizing Christianity for defining God as primarily a divine king who imposes his will on the world, and whose most important attribute is power. As opposed to the most widely accepted forms of Christianity, Whitehead emphasized an idea of God that he called "the brief Galilean vision of humility":

Question: What was Whitehead's description of God?

Question: What is Whitehead's most well-known critical statement regarding the Christian notion of God?

Question: What qualities dis Whitehead state that Christians attributed to their version of God?
Passage: It should be emphasized, however, that for Whitehead God is not necessarily tied to religion. Rather than springing primarily from religious faith, Whitehead saw God as necessary for his metaphysical system. His system required that an order exist among possibilities, an order that allowed for novelty in the world and provided an aim to all entities. Whitehead posited that these ordered potentials exist in what he called the primordial nature of God. However, Whitehead was also interested in religious experience. This led him to reflect more intensively on what he saw as the second nature of God, the consequent nature. Whitehead's conception of God as a "dipolar" entity has called for fresh theological thinking.

Question: What was Whitehead's belief about God in relation to religion?

Question: In what did Whitehead believe that those concepts existed?

Question: What did Whitehead view as the second nature of God?

Question: What type of God did Whitehead believe existed?

Question: Why did Whitehead view the existence of God as a necessity for his metaphysical system?
Passage: God's consequent nature, on the other hand, is anything but unchanging – it is God's reception of the world's activity. As Whitehead puts it, "[God] saves the world as it passes into the immediacy of his own life. It is the judgment of a tenderness which loses nothing that can be saved." In other words, God saves and cherishes all experiences forever, and those experiences go on to change the way God interacts with the world. In this way, God is really changed by what happens in the world and the wider universe, lending the actions of finite creatures an eternal significance.

Question: How does Whitehead define he consequent nature of God?

Question: What does Whitehead say that God does with all experiences?

Question: How does Whitehead describe the judgment of God?

Question: What effect does Whitehead claim that experiences have on God?

Question: What conclusion does Whitehead draw about God's treatment of humans' experiences?
Passage: Whitehead thus sees God and the world as fulfilling one another. He sees entities in the world as fluent and changing things that yearn for a permanence which only God can provide by taking them into God's self, thereafter changing God and affecting the rest of the universe throughout time. On the other hand, he sees God as permanent but as deficient in actuality and change: alone, God is merely eternally unrealized possibilities, and requires the world to actualize them. God gives creatures permanence, while the creatures give God actuality and change. Here it is worthwhile to quote Whitehead at length:

Question: In what way did Whitehead view God as deficient?

Question: What did Whitehead claim God would be without the world?

Question: How does Whitehead view the relationship between God an the world?

Question: How does he define entities' need for God?

Question: How dis Whitehead believe God provided permanence to entities?
Passage: For Whitehead the core of religion was individual. While he acknowledged that individuals cannot ever be fully separated from their society, he argued that life is an internal fact for its own sake before it is an external fact relating to others. His most famous remark on religion is that "religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness ... and if you are never solitary, you are never religious." Whitehead saw religion as a system of general truths that transformed a person's character. He took special care to note that while religion is often a good influence, it is not necessarily good – an idea which he called a "dangerous delusion" (e.g., a religion might encourage the violent extermination of a rival religion's adherents).

Question: What did Whitehead believe was the basis of religion?

Question: What is Whitehead's most famous statement on religion?

Question: How did Whitehead define religion?

Question: How did Whitehead define "dangerous delusion" as it relates to religion?
Passage: However, while Whitehead saw religion as beginning in solitariness, he also saw religion as necessarily expanding beyond the individual. In keeping with his process metaphysics in which relations are primary, he wrote that religion necessitates the realization of "the value of the objective world which is a community derivative from the interrelations of its component individuals." In other words, the universe is a community which makes itself whole through the relatedness of each individual entity to all the others – meaning and value do not exist for the individual alone, but only in the context of the universal community. Whitehead writes further that each entity "can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe. Religion is world-loyalty. The spirit at once surrenders itself to this universal claim and appropriates it for itself." In this way the individual and universal/social aspects of religion are mutually dependent.

Question: In what state did Whitehead believe religion began?

Question: What realization did Whitehead believe religion made necessary?

Question: What did Whitehead believe was necessary for an entity to have meaning and value?

Question: How does Whitehead describe religion as world-loyalty?

Question: What did Whitehead believe was the relationship between the individual and social aspects of religion?
Passage: Overall, however, Whitehead's influence is very difficult to characterize. In English-speaking countries, his primary works are little-studied outside of Claremont and a select number of liberal graduate-level theology and philosophy programs. Outside of these circles his influence is relatively small and diffuse, and has tended to come chiefly through the work of his students and admirers rather than Whitehead himself. For instance, Whitehead was a teacher and long-time friend and collaborator of Bertrand Russell, and he also taught and supervised the dissertation of Willard Van Orman Quine, both of whom are important figures in analytic philosophy – the dominant strain of philosophy in English-speaking countries in the 20th century. Whitehead has also had high-profile admirers in the continental tradition, such as French post-structuralist philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who once dryly remarked of Whitehead that "he stands provisionally as the last great Anglo-American philosopher before Wittgenstein's disciples spread their misty confusion, sufficiency, and terror." French sociologist and anthropologist Bruno Latour even went so far as to call Whitehead "the greatest philosopher of the 20th century."

Question: Where has interest outside of those areas mainly come from?

Question: What French sociologist and anthropologist stated that Whitehead was "the greatest philosopher of the 20th century"?

Question: Where are Whitehead's works primarily studied in English-speaking countries?

Question: Who are two of Whitehead's students that have gone on to become renowned in the field of analytic philosophy?

Question: What did Gilles Deleuze say about Whitehead?
Passage: Historically Whitehead's work has been most influential in the field of American progressive theology. The most important early proponent of Whitehead's thought in a theological context was Charles Hartshorne, who spent a semester at Harvard as Whitehead's teaching assistant in 1925, and is widely credited with developing Whitehead's process philosophy into a full-blown process theology. Other notable process theologians include John B. Cobb, Jr., David Ray Griffin, Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, C. Robert Mesle, Roland Faber, and Catherine Keller.

Question: In what field of study has Whitehead's work been most influential in the United States?

Question: Who was the most important early supporter of Whitehead's work in the context of theology?

Question: What advancement of Whitehead's process philosophy is attributed to Charles Hartshorne?

Question: Who are some other distinguished process theologians?
Passage: Process theology typically stresses God's relational nature. Rather than seeing God as impassive or emotionless, process theologians view God as "the fellow sufferer who understands", and as the being who is supremely affected by temporal events. Hartshorne points out that people would not praise a human ruler who was unaffected by either the joys or sorrows of his followers – so why would this be a praise-worthy quality in God? Instead, as the being who is most affected by the world, God is the being who can most appropriately respond to the world. However, process theology has been formulated in a wide variety of ways. C. Robert Mesle, for instance, advocates a "process naturalism", i.e. a process theology without God.

Question: What aspect of God is usually emphasized in process theology?

Question: How is God usually perceived by process theologians?

Question: Why did Hartshorne feel that God must be affected by people?

Question: Why would God being substantially affected by the world be beneficial?

Question: What type of process theology does C. Robert Mesle promote?
Passage: In fact, process theology is difficult to define because process theologians are so diverse and transdisciplinary in their views and interests. John B. Cobb, Jr. is a process theologian who has also written books on biology and economics. Roland Faber and Catherine Keller integrate Whitehead with poststructuralist, postcolonialist, and feminist theory. Charles Birch was both a theologian and a geneticist. Franklin I. Gamwell writes on theology and political theory. In Syntheism - Creating God in The Internet Age, futurologists Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist repeatedly credit Whitehead for the process theology they see rising out of the participatory culture expected to dominate the digital era.

Question: What subjects has John B. Cobb, Jr. written books on other than process theology?

Question: What theories do Roland Faber and Catherine Keller combine with Whitehead's ideas?

Question: What was Charles Birch's profession besides theologian?

Question: Who authored "Syntheism - Creating God in the Internet Age"?

Question: Why is there difficulty in defining process theology ?
Passage: Whitehead also described religion more technically as "an ultimate craving to infuse into the insistent particularity of emotion that non-temporal generality which primarily belongs to conceptual thought alone." In other words, religion takes deeply felt emotions and contextualizes them within a system of general truths about the world, helping people to identify their wider meaning and significance. For Whitehead, religion served as a kind of bridge between philosophy and the emotions and purposes of a particular society. It is the task of religion to make philosophy applicable to the everyday lives of ordinary people.

Question: What was Whitehead's technical definition of religion?

Question: What did Whitehead believe religion did with strong emotions?

Question: What purpose did Whitehead believe religion served?

Question: What did Whitehead believe was the job of religion regarding philosophy?