Collective Soul applied to Pan-psychism

Quoting tilda-psychist

Whitehead's metaphysics incorporated a scientific worldview similar to Einstein's theory of relativity into the development of his philosophical system. His process philosophy argues that the fundamental elements of the universe are "occasions of experience," which can together create something as complex as a human being. This experience is not consciousness;[clarification needed] there is no mind-body duality under this system, since mind is seen as a particularly developed kind of experience. Whitehead was not a subjective idealist, and while his occasions of experience (or "actual occasions") resemble Leibniz's monads, they are described as constitutively interrelated. He embraced panentheism, with God encompassing all occasions of experience and yet still transcending them. Whitehead believed that these occasions of experience are the smallest element in the universe—even smaller than subatomic particles.[citation needed] Building off Whitehead's work, process philosopher Michel Weber argues for a pancreativism.[53]

I thin one of his most interesting ideas is how he imagines a compound individual vs. a corpuscular society:

https://www.iep.utm.edu/processp/:Although the system is a monistic one, which is characterized by experience going “all the way down” to the simplest and most basic actualities, there is a duality between the types of organizational patterns to which societies of actual occasions might conform. In some instances, actual occasions will come together and give rise to a “regnant” or dominant society of occasions. The most obvious example of this is when the molecule-occasions and cell-occasions in a body produce, by means of a central nervous system, a mind or soul. This mind or soul prehends all the feeling and experience of the billions of other bodily occasions and coordinates and integrates them into higher and more complex forms of experience. The entire society that supports and includes a dominant member is, to use Hartshorne’s term, a compound individual.

Other times, however, a bodily society of occasions lacks a dominant member to organize and integrate the experiences of others. Rocks, trees, and other non-sentient objects are examples of these aggregate or corpuscular societies. In this case, the diverse experiences of the multitude of actual occasions conflict, compete, and are for the most part lost and cancel each other out. Whereas the society of occasions that comprises a compound individual is a monarchy, Whitehead describes corpuscular societies as “democracies.” This duality accounts for how, at the macroscopic phenomenal level, we experience a duality between the mental and physical despite the fundamentally and uniformly experiential nature of reality. Those things that seem to be purely physical are corpuscular societies of occasions, while those objects that seem to possess consciousness, intelligence, or subjectivity are compound individuals.

Reply to schopenhauer1

I'm reading through what you wrote right now. Do you want me to repost the OP? I guess i'll go ahead and repost the OP.

Reply to schopenhauer1

i'm taking the post down. I'm adding what you said to my journal. Thats fascinating. Send me a private message if you want to know why i took the post down. again.

Interesting stuff. This is what I've thought for a while, being the most probable explanation for consciousness. I had never heard the terminologies before, of "societies" and "occasions of experience."

Does Whitehead leave room for an aspect of existence that is not experienced? Are occasions of experience everything, or are they just part of reality? If they are everything, he would be saying that there is nothing to experience but experience... which doesn't make sense.

About the compound individual, I think the emergence of this form is founded on memory. I see memory as "occasions of experience" acting as capacitors, rather than a direct connection.

"Whitehead describes corpuscular societies as “democracies.”" - Should say anarchy, not democracy.

I'd like clarification on the "occasions of experience" thing, because we can see what experience looks like from the third person by looking at the electrical impulses in a brain. Wouldn't that be an "occasion of experience" above all else? We have way more reason to believe that we are looking at is pure consciousness from the outside when we look inside a brain.