TPF : Process Philosophy -- a metaphysics for our time

[Gnomon]

Whitehead was a logician and mathematician so he did not (to my knowledge) believe in ESP in the usual sense.

I assumed that he was not talking about magical Extrasensory Perception, but I'm still grasping at an understanding of "knowledge that is obtained by means 'outside' of sense perception"*1. Perhaps you can explain the distinction between "presentational" and "conceptual" immediacy, and what that has to do with obtaining knowledge. My post above replaced those terms with Perception (physical) and Conception (metaphysical). My guess is that the latter refers to Reasoning from received Information inputs to inferred Insights & Principles as Knowledge outputs. Does that sound like something Whitehead might mean?

*1. Whitehead :
"He suggested that human experience involves two distinct modes of direct perception of the external world: presentational immediacy and conceptual immediacy"
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... perception

There is nothing in Whitehead which is completely counter to modern science now or then. It is the reductionist, deterministic, mechanistic view of nature which Whitehead rejects.

That's why I mentioned "Holism" in my post above, which includes the Ideas & Ideals & Meanings (culture) that are omitted from the scientific Reductionist view of nature. It encompasses both innate Matter and emergent Mind in the process of Evolution. Holism is the Synthetic tendency in evolution*2. It's how old stuff is transformed into new stuff. And how living organisms emerge from non-living matter.

*2. Holism and Evolution :
Unfortunately, Holism is still controversial in Philosophy. That is primarily due to the practical and commercial success of reductive methods in the physical sciences. Methodological Reductionism attempts to understand a complex system by breaking it down into its component parts. And that approach works well for mechanical devices, but not so well for living things.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page33.html

[Gnomon]

Whitehead was a logician and mathematician so he did not (to my knowledge) believe in ESP in the usual sense.

In my previous post, I opined that Whitehead did not mean that Magical ESP could reveal information & knowledge via non-physical channels. But perhaps there is another option. I've seen him described as an Idealist*1, but not as a Mystic*2. Is it possible that Whitehead believed that it was possible to commune directly with God?

He doesn't seem to be the type to revel in ecstasies & altered states. I occasionally (rarely) learn some relevant information via easy Intuition instead of effortful Reason. But I don't think of it as Mystical enlightenment, rather as "pattern-matching, in which case the motivated brain accesses long-buried data in long-term memory.

Perhaps ANW thought that all things were connected back to God (occasion of creation) , but not necessarily directly.

*1. Idealism :
In the third argument, the idealist holds that in the individual’s most-immediate experience, that of his own subjective awareness, the intuitive self can achieve a direct apprehension of ultimate reality, which reveals it to be spiritual. Thus, the mystic bypasses normal cognition, feeling that, for metaphysical probings, the elaborate processes of mediation interposed between sense objects and their perceptions reduce its reliability as compared with the direct grasp of intuition.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/ideali ... -arguments

*2. ANW Mysticism? :
Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy, particularly his concept of "process philosophy," while not explicitly focused on mysticism, can be seen as having mystical implications, emphasizing the interconnectedness of all things and the importance of direct experience and intuition
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... d+mystical