This book has two main tasks: (1) to call attention to the special challenges presented by our experience of affect—all varieties of pleasure and pain—and (2) to show how these challenges can be overcome by an “enrichment approach” that understands affect as the enrichment or deterioration of conscious activity as a whole. This “enrichment approach” draws from Alfred North Whitehead as well as the pragmatists John Dewey and William James, all of whom thought of affect as a fundamental aspect of experience rather than a special class of feelings. It also draws from recent...

This book newly articulates the international and interdisciplinary reach of Whitehead’s organic process cosmology for a variety of topics across science and philosophy, and in dialogue with a variety historical and contemporary voices. Integrating Whitehead’s thought with the insights of Bergson, James, Pierce, Merleau-Ponty, Descola, Fuchs, Hofmann, Grof and many others, contributors from around the world reveal the relevance of process philosophy to physics, cosmology, astrobiology, ecology, metaphysics, aesthetics, psychedelics, and religion. A global collection, this book expresses...