Dissertation Outline Treatment v.2 _February2015

Outlined Treatment of Dissertation

February 17, 2015

By Joan E. Conger

For Dissertation Committee, to compare to Treatment of

January 5, 2015

(Note to reader: The major difference between earlier and

current outlines is that this outline narrows down to focus

solely on the contents of chapter two from the previous

outline and includes as brief illustrations elements from

other chapters in the previous outline.)

DISSERTATION

(estimated 175-200 pages, 50,000-55,000 words)

LEADERSHIP EFFECTIVENESS,

THE FALLACY OF MISPLACED CONCRETENESS, AND

HIGHER MODES OF THOUGHT-FEELING:

AN [APPLICATION] OF

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Conger_DissertationOutline_Feb2015

ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD’S PROCESS PHILOSOPHY

[TO ORGANIZATION [THEORY] [CHANGE]]

[TO LEADERSHIP [AND FOLLOWER-SHIP]]

Introduction

(estimated 5 pages, 1,500 words)

Introductory Précis

For those concerned with effective leadership, process

reality confirms that with width of grasp comes greater

choice for more effective leadership. Leaders who

acknowledge the world as fundamentally processual, process-

relational, and process-thoughtful can only approach

concreteness as an ongoing, recurring width of grasp that

actively creates greater choice for more effectiveness, then

passes away into the abstract. Any degree to which one

abstracts from the concreteness of this fundamental doctrine

will be reflected in the degree to which one’s real

effectiveness is curtailed. Process recognizes the

fundamental fact that the only actual entities are the

present moments of grasp, whose width, depth and complex

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reach will always, because the universe is a process

universe, determine their effectiveness for that entity

within the rest of the whole.

Grasp.

In Alfred North Whitehead’s understanding of Process

philosophy (1929/1978) a prehensile grasp of reality shapes

the current instance of reality for each entity, or occasion

of becoming. This grasp transpires for every occasion,

whatever its perceptual reach into the whole of reality at

the moment of becoming and whatever the degree of

intentional complexity with which it uses the data from this

reach to decide its form in the moment of becoming. From

this understanding, Whitehead adopts the word prehension to

show that all occasions of becoming embody within their very

existence and coming-to-be a dipolar inclusion of sensate

physicality of given form and conceptual sense of

potentiated aim. For occasions of higher complexity,

especially as consciousness becomes more evident in each

occasion, the breadth of grasp includes more of the

conceptual pole.

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Choice.

Those occasions that approach conscious awareness are

therefor influenced more strongly by acknowledgements,

conscious or unconscious, of process principles. Width of

felt-thought grasp creates a greater pool of discernments

and possibilities, whether given or envisaged, from which to

choose. Process thought affirms for this constitutional

grasp, whatever the grade of complexity, at least the

fundamental principles of experiential awareness, inter-

relational perspective, and intent for creative advance.

These underlying process principles manifest concretely as

experiential flow, interdependent unity, and continually

emergent change through rare but important creative novel

advances. Greater grasp provides greater creative response

from within an occasion’s more complex felt-sense of what is

“good” from that occasion’s perspective. An ever more

coherent grasp of concrete process reality originates in

each occasion the potential for ever more appropriate

choices.

Effectiveness.

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With increasing dipolar complexity these choices come

ever nearer to approximating the most effective outcome for

the occasion given the prevailing emergent conditions

throughout the whole. In other words, the more effective an

occasion the more of a grasp it has achieved of its

attunement to the experiential flow of the whole, its

irreducible interdependence with the whole, and its non-

local significance for the vector of the whole toward a best

outcome. A constriction of effectiveness occurs, however,

when more complex, ostensibly more conscious, occasions

commit what Whitehead called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness,

when a conscious occasion of becoming, or decision, mistakes

abstractions like mind-matter dualism, enduring substance,

and independent location in “time” or “space” for the

concrete realities of process nature, including the

fundamental real facts of experience, relationship, and

intent. Process awareness creates choice, but process

reality itself is not a choice. Process reality is

fundamental to all reality. If these realities hold

throughout all of nature, including human nature and

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organizational reality, then effective decision arises as a

central element for enduring, surviving, and thriving.

Leadership.

Any condition of becoming is potentially a moment of

influence on all else to come, always vectored however

narrowly broadly toward enjoyment. The intensity of

enjoyment that underlies each decision to become can be

narrowed in its effectiveness for the good of the occasion

and the good of the whole by mistakes in misplaced concreteness:

abstractions of awareness, reasoning, or expectation are

taken to be concrete reality. No occasion of “effective

leadership” is exempt from Process reality. The wider the

grasp, with good or ill intent, the wider the influence any

single occasion’s perspective has on the whole. The

implications of such abstractions are innumerable, for

example, leaders cannot be characterized as

epistemologically acting from rational “choice,”

ontologically singular individuals under the influence of

(or influencing for others) some set of external “forces,”

nor does the overarching nature of leadership ever exclude

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“followers.” Process reality completely changes the

conceptualization of leadership however it is engaged,

whether witnessed, practiced for intended consequences, or

performative of concrete accomplishments. The entirety of

this radical alteration of fundamental modern Western truths

of epistemology, ontology and, indeed, metaphysics, lies

beyond the scope of this dissertation, however, except where

these truths, succinctly explored, illuminate our present

topic. I limit the present discussion to one of the first

implications Process principles will have for anyone

attempting to engage the field of leadership from any

perspective (practitioner, interventionist, researcher,

etc.). Anyone interested in leadership must be ever-vigilant

of falling victim to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness,

however else they put to use a Process understanding of

reality.

Chapter Summary

Process principles.

Leaders are no different from all other occasions of

becoming. Indeed, Process philosophy would characterize

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leaders the same as any other concrete (in-process-of-

becoming) entity in the universe: as a recurring occasion of

continually emergent, holistically interdependent, sense-

making decision of self-creativity. If effective leadership is

about creating the best outcome over the largest possible

sphere of influence (and this contention will be explored

along with other fundamental concepts in chapter one), then

in a Process world an always dipolar width of grasp (illustrated

in chapter two), has the potential to create these best

outcomes from within at least three Process principles: the

self-organizing ontological principle, the radically

interdependent principle of relativity, and the creative

intensity of the principle of process (explained in chapter

three).

Misplaced concreteness.

I will use these three core Whiteheadian Process

principles to examine who effective leaders are from the

perspective of rejecting three misplaced concretenesses

(enumerated in chapter four). Leaders are emotional-rational

beings, never exclusively one or the other (to believe so is

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an instance of the fallacy of bifurcation). Leaders are

radically interdependent in their self-formation even as

they radically participate in the recurring coherence or

incoherence of the whole, and are therefor never substantive

or enduring with essential and accidental qualities in-

themselves (which is an instance of the fallacy of

substance-quality). Finally, leaders are continually

emergent from the whole of experience and creativity,

neither separated nor bounded as if contained “within” or

lying “on” a surface-linear progression of an externally

occurring space and time (which is an instance of the

fallacy of simple location).

However, just because these abstractions are a fallacy,

non-commission is not a discrete choice that negates

entirely the potentials available in the commission however

much that commission may restrict outcomes. For example,

abstraction has its place in the stability, personal

perspective, and limitations on choice, required at key

moments in the innovation process. Fallacies of misplaced

concreteness can thus be committed to varying degrees of

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complexity, whether unwittingly habitual, consciously

dogmatic, or fully judicious, and remain effective to

varying degrees (also explored in chapter four).

Higher modes of thought.

Effective leaders make coherent, consonant, and

appropriate decisions for the good of all within their

sphere of influence. In a Process universe, effectiveness

must accord with Process principles, and leaders who seek to

be effective will replace fallacies of misplaced

concreteness with the cultivation of higher modes of Process

thought (interpreted in chapter five). When these leaders

begin to adopt Process principles (the ontological

principle, the principle of relativity, and the principle of

process), they will gradually begin to approach leadership

from the unattainable breadth of full cosmological grasp (in

the Greek etymological sense of cosmos, “the all”). However,

with progressively more capacity for awareness, broader

perspective, and more intentional creativity comes the

effectiveness of the process natures of the self-organizing,

interdependent, self-enjoying creative unitive experience of

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the whole (what Whitehead calls the the primordial nature,

the consequent nature, and the superjective nature (e.g.,

1929/1978, pp. 342-351), also interpreted in chapter five)

from whence the highest coherent, harmonious, and

appropriate experiences for the Good of All emerge.

Chapter 1

(estimated 20 pages, 6,000 words )

With Width of Grasp Comes Greater Choice for More Effective

Leadership: Conventional Wisdom

This chapter will take up an initial, brief recasting

of familiar constructs into Process terms: “nature, process,

concreteness, abstraction, fallacy, width of grasp, choice,

effective, leadership, and organization.” In this way this

chapter broaches the idea of higher modes of thought-

feeling, without yet Whitehead’s technical language or

special constructs and compares Process thought to an almost

too-brief glance at conventional philosophical assumptions

that underlie these words commonplace definitions. Finally,

through three appellations normally used to refer to Process

Philosophy, “processual, process-relational, and process

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thought,” I will be inviting you to follow Whitehead into a

wholly different application of the notion of “value,”

whether logical or effective, and the power to discern and

declare such value.

Our exploration of the value Whitehead’s Process

philosophy (e.g., 1925, 1927, 1929/1978, 1929b, 1933, 1938)

might have for leaders and the improvement of leadership

effectiveness is not a purely analytical, nor a purely

constructive, nor a purely phenomenological, nor even a

purely socially critical exercise. While these approaches

are not incorrect, they can prove insufficient in an

inherently processual world, and Process thought brings them

into a resonance that widens their reach into a more

compelling field of influence. I will be venturing with

Whitehead into the world of Process where value means “of

interest” and thus creatively effective at a material level

potentiated by the felt-sense-of-concept. I will have

created a dissertation of value if you at least find your

felt-sense-of-appropriateness to have become more

interesting, your practices to have developed more import

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within and beyond your perspective, and your performative

manifestations of the new to have become ever more widely

influential inside yourself and within your world of

possibility, because these two “places,” inside and outside,

are essentially the same. This chapter begins the journey

with a shared vocabulary of nine concepts that will make our

encounter together on these pages more interesting, and thus

more effective.

Chapter 2


Six Assertions of Dipolar Process Reality: Concreteness

Begins Here

( Three pages, 900 words)

Concreteness is a processual movement of becoming

around two poles of formation. Whitehead, and indeed many

other Process Philosophers before and since, have affirmed

many principles of a process universe not included in the

scope of this work. I confine this investigation to an

initial maxim: for Process thought to be an effective guide

for action it must first not fall victim to the fallacy of

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misplaced concreteness. Concreteness cannot, first and

foremost, be abstracted from the dipolar nature of becoming.

In a Process world, an always dipolar width of grasp creates

decisive outcomes for each concrete (extant) occasion of

becoming from within concrete (foundational) process

principles. This chapter will survey six of Whitehead’s

clarifications of dipolar Process reality with the aim of

providing an initial foundation for understanding

“concrescence,” which will be needed in subsequent chapters

on the three principles process that offer a first glimpse

into the realm of processual width of grasp, the three

fallacies of misplaced concreteness that narrow dipolar

grasp, and higher modes of thought that can provide breadth

for effectiveness.

In each section, I will provide supporting references

to Whitehead’s work, and I will begin introducing for

critique selected representative modern, Western epistemic,

ontological, and metaphysical assertions concerning

individuals, their relations and their world, for example,

dualistic cognitivism, materialistic objectivist

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reification, hypostatization of formalized theoretical

constructs, universally reductionist explicability,

totalizing intellectualist-mechancial essentialism,

prescriptively idealizing determinististic-normativistic

teleological incrementalism, naturalized functionalist-

controlling voluntarism, agentially individualistic

subjectivism, naturalistic empiricist realism, Popperian

scientism (propositionally stabilized eliminativism),

logico-grammatical representationalism, humanist-rationalist

reflexive transcendentalism, etc. I will continue this

practice throughout the dissertation. These habits of

thought (unwitting, dogmatic, or judicious) are fraught with

long histories of argument and almost infinite

concatenations of subtlety, and I cannot within the scope of

this work analyze the entire oeuvre of Western thought for

its fallacies of misplaced concretenesses. However, I can

hope to illustrate enough of the myriad abstractive mistakes

to introduce the beginnings of alternative practices for

practitioners and suggest further implications for those who

would “measure to explain” or “intervene to develop” higher

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modes of leadership effectiveness.

To assist me in grounding these six aspects’ high-

abstractions into lived experience, I will briefly introduce

three identified challenges to effectiveness from a selected

set of sources in leadership literature. In chapter four, I

will call them up again to help me illuminate the fallacies

and degrees of commission. I select these exemplars to

illustrate manifestations of processual dipolarities because

they are directly identified by practitioners in the field

(command positions in the US military, clinical

administrators in mental health services, and leaders of

multinational organizations, respectively). These selections

are in keeping with this dissertation’s focus on

practitioner perspectives of direct experience. While

meeting peer-review rigor, these examples have pragmatically

applied, but never initially limited themselves to,

particular scholarly theoretical constructs or research-

intervention modalities.

The first challenge reveals a global context for

leadership that is “VUCA,” inherently volatile, uncertain,

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complex, and ambiguous (USAWC, 2004, pp. 11-12;) and

requires leader development toward an entirely different

order of strategic capacities than traditionally taught to

emerging leaders (Chia & Holt, 2009; Petrie, 2011). Another

challenge was discovered by Sandra Bloom and colleagues, the

eventual creators of “Sanctuary” leadership programs for

mental health facilities, where they reveals the

pervasiveness of “trauma-informed work environments” found

throughout a wide range of management contexts that is

consistently resolved by emotionally safe, least-

hierarchical, deeply interactive organizations. (Bloom

1997/2013; Bloom & Farragher, 2011, 2013). Finally, through

“presencing” (Scharmer 2009; Scharmer & Kaufer, 2013) Otto

Scharmer, a heir-apparant to participative action research

and learning organization theorists (Argyris & Schön, 1978,

1996; Lewin, 1951; Schein, 1992; Senge, 1990; Senge et al,

2004; Torbert, 1976, 1991, Torbert & Cook-Greuter, 2004),

hopes to rectify leaders’ “blindspot” (2009, p. 6-13) toward

the source of their own mental models in the hopes of

becoming more receptive to the emergent future when facing

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fundamental systemic difficulties that require fundamental

systemic change. These exemplars retain some degree of

misplaced concreteness in their models, and this issue will

be taken up as well in ensuing chapters.

Dipolar Foundations: Experience and Creativity

(Three pages, 1200 words)

Metaphysical reality (the real, concrete universe)

consists only of the activity of experience emergent from its

cardinal condition, creativity, and nothing else. Matter is

experience arising out of creativity, period. (e.g.,

Whitehead 1929/1978, p. 21, 166-167)

Dipolar Becoming: Physical and Conceptual


In the metaphysical reality of each occasion,

experience ranges in complexity from the mere passage of

formation to the intensity of full consciousness and is

composed around two poles of experience: physical reception

(ingression) and conceptual formation (prehension). (e.g.,

Whitehead, 1929/1978, p. 45)

Dipolar Objective Causality: Efficient and Final

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Ontological creativity is a causal determination

(satisfaction) that continually arises from the efficacies of

givens (datum) and potentials (eternal objects) and from final

intensities and aversions (appetitions for satisfaction of aim

and form), and such determinations (superjects) continually

pass on into the next occasions of creative determination as

real and primal (not abstract, epiphenomenal, imaginal, or

derivative) givens and potentials. (e.g., Whitehead,

1929/1978, p. 45)

Dipolar Subjective Prehension: Form and Aim


The ontological decision to become just this, this

time, turns on the question of the enjoyment of relevance

that is answered simultaneously from within the occasion’s

considerations of form (what the occasion is meant to be)

and aim (what it means to be), whether that phrase

“considerations of form and aim” is taken as a less complex

“to become real again” or a more complex intentionality to

realize existence ever more fully, coherently, harmoniously,

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and appropriately. (e.g., Whitehead, 1929/1978, p. 19) To

“realize” means simultaneously “to manifest as matter

(experience arising out of creativity)” and “to experience,

to attend to what matters;” these are not negating

categories. For an occasion to “consider” is not an

anthropomorphic psychologism, but an experienced degree of

complex self-formation within causal efficacy and presentational

immediacy.

Dipolar Grasp for Decisive Choice: Intensity and Contrast


The epistemology of enjoyment, whether simply of self-

existence or more complexly of self-realization, is the

occasion’s private synthesis of both the intensities of what

has been and contrasts with what could be, an ordering that

lends a felt-sense-of-conceptualized-rightness to the

accomplishment of that moment’s togetherness, or unitive

experience, its coming together to be just this, now. (e.g.,

Whitehead, 1929/1978, p. 83-85)

Dipolar Effectiveness: Symbolic Reference and Imaginative Extension


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To move epistemologically beyond “blind [or] excess

zest” for becoming, higher modes of feeling-concept can open

within the prehensive mode of symbolic reference. The occasion

entertains possibilities within a broader common ground of

contrast, and its intensities begin to inform more adaptive,

more creative, and thus more enjoyable unitive (self-

creative) decisions to become this new adaptation to the

givens and the potentials. (e.g., Whitehead, 1929/1978, p.

163) With further complexity, imaginative extension introduces

symbolic reference to the first glimmers of the originative

freedoms of consciousness and thence to ever fuller

awareness. (e.g., Whitehead, 1929/1978, p. 168)

The Process Reality of Leadership: [The Dipolar Nature of

Effective Leadership]

(Two pages, 600 words)

In this concluding section I will more fully draw

parallels to width of grasp, choice and leadership

effectiveness, including references to the literature, that

summarize the above theoretical concepts.

Chapter Three

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(estimated 20 pages, 6,000 words )

Three Principles of Process Reality


This chapter will articulate how the dipolar width of

grasp illustrated in chapter two creates decisive outcomes

from within at least three process principles: the self-

organizing ontological principle, the radically

interdependent principle of relativity, and the creative

intensity of the principle of process. Whitehead listed more

than forty Process principles in Process and Reality (1929/1978,

pp. 20-30) alone. I choose these three because in various

places Whitehead directly relates them to the capacity to

acknowledge the fallacies of misplaced concreteness. In each

section, I will provide supporting references to Whitehead’s

work, and to illustrate manifestations of these principles I

will briefly identify certain remedies for effectiveness

from leadership literature, appealing in one way or another

to a presence-based leadership stance, a category which I

briefly defend in this introduction. Again, these selected

authors’ works have stood the test of time in the field of

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leadership development. Not only has each enjoyed longevity

for two decades or more in the popular press, demonstrating

a solid appeal for practicing leaders, each author, or

colleagues continuing their work, has also published at

least one recent recommendation that expands their

conclusions more than ever in the direction of Process

thought, though most not expressly so. I list these

references below.

Ontological Principle

(Five pages, 1,500 words)

Every processual decision to become just this occasion,

as is, derives from nowhere else but the occasion’s own

decision to become itself amid all the actuality and

potentiality presented before its own modes of form and aim

seeking unity. (e.g., Whitehead, 1929/1978, pp. 24, 43, 147-

148, 243) Thus substance is never bifurcated, form from aim.

Actuality cannot be abstracted from the dipolar felt-sense

of self-concept, both wholly receptive of all other passed-

away entities’ constitutions (whether acknowledged or

ignored) and wholly conditioned by its own aim to enjoy its

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own unity. (pp. 18-19)

This section will engage exemplars of presence as an

acting-deciding-potentiating from within a self-forming

identity that acknowledges its radical unboundedness. True

constraints of the given world are recognized simultaneously

with a degree of openness to novelty and potential for

greater enjoyment of self-in-world and world-through-self.

In Whitehead’s process thought this is the ontological

principle, but these authors exemplify this principle with

varying degrees of fit: Daniel Goleman writes about

emotional intelligence (1995, 1998, 2006; and with Boyatzis

& McKee, 2002) and focus (1977/1988, 2013), Martin Seligman

writes about learned optimism (1972, 1990, 1999; Peterson &

Seligman, 1983; with Maier & Geer, 1968) and flourishing

(2002, 2011), and Peter Senge writes about learning

organizations (1990, 1994, 1999; with Scharmer, Jawarski, &

Flowers, 2004) while Otto Scharmer continues his work with

investigations into “presencing” (2009; with Kaufer, 2013).

Principle of Relativity


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The process-relational potentiality of every past

occasion is present in and becomes less or more relevant to

every current decision for self-enjoyment. (e.g., Whitehead,

1929/1978, p. 7, 22, 28, 50-51, 58-59, 149, 220) Thus

substantive composite character is never a mere quality of

enduring substance but instead is the outcome of the

influential intensity of the presence of all other

previously actualized entities, from which the occasion can

never be abstracted and remain actual. (e.g., pp. 58-59)

This section will engage exemplars of presence as

acting-deciding-engaging from within a productive influence

that always includes a felt-sense of creative advance. This

felt-sense of rightness is not a permanent thing to be

possessed or located in the “right” decision. This sense is

continuously inherent in and continually emergent from the

field of shared experience. Envisioned potentialities of the

“good,” however that may be defined in that moment from that

perspective, take on a sense of real possibility, rather

than imagined aspiration. This field of energy and

information acts as a continually emergent source of

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individual and communitarian agency. The field acts as a

continuous background against which decisions are made,

while it also remains continually immanent in the making of

each choice. In Whitehead’s process thought this is the

principle of relativity, but these authors exemplify this

principle with varying degrees of fit: Richard Boyatzis and

Annie McKee write about emotional intelligence and resonant

leadership (2005, 2006; with Goleman, 2002), Mihaly

Csikszentmihalyi writes about flow (1990, 1996) and “good

work” (2003; with Gardner & Damon, 2001), and Howard Gardner

writes about frames of mind and mastery (1983/1993/2011,

1993, 2007; with Laskin, 1995).

Principle of Process


Process thought must derive from an acknowledgment of

the principle that constitution, concreteness, is a

continual, iterative becoming. (e.g., Whitehead, 1929/1978,

p. 16, 23, 153-154, 228, 235) The central tenet of process

is the ongoingness of the felt-sense-of-things (prehension)

as an intuition of all else that exists (whether simple

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reception or complex understanding, pp. 153-154). This tenet

lies at the very core of the creative advance that is the

concrete universe and from whose conceptual ordering the

decisive occasion can never be abstracted and remain fully

coherent (e.g., p. 235).

This section will engage exemplars of presence as

acting-deciding-appreciating from within a purposive

emergence that comes from choices wielded not external

forces imposed. One’s recurring search for attainment of

highest aim recognizes the concerns of a given reality while

remaining open to potentials not yet realized. In

Whitehead’s process thought this is the principle of

process, but these authors exemplify this principle with

varying degrees of fit: William Torbert writes about

participative action inquiry and attuned post-conventional

cognitive development (1973, 1974, 1976, 1989, 1991, 1994,

1998, 2000; with Cook-Gruter et al, 2004), Karl Weick writes

about collective sensemaking first as retrospective of past

mistakes (1977, 1988, 1995) then as anticipatory of emerging

futures (2004, 2010, with Roberts, 1993; with Sutcliffe,

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2001/2007), and Francisco Varela wrote about autopoeisis

(with Maturana, 1980, 1998) and becoming aware in the

specious present (1999; with Depraz &Vermersch, 2002).

Processual Width of Grasp, Process-Relational Choice,

Process Thoughtful Effectiveness

(Two pages, 600 words )

In this concluding section I will more fully draw

parallels to width of grasp, choice and leadership

effectiveness, including references to the literature, that

summarize the above theoretical concepts. In this section I

will consider whether the appellations for process thought,

namely “processual,” “process-relational,” and “process

thought,” are interchangeable, or whether they subtly

contrast for a more informative understanding of the lived

experience of higher-mode thought-feeling, especially for

leadership effectiveness.

Chapter Four


Fallacies of Misplaced Concreteness and Degrees of

Commission

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(Three pages, 900 words )

The dipolar grasp so far described can be narrowed in

its effectiveness by mistakes in awareness, reasoning, or

expectation that derive from lack of acknowledgment of at

least those principles of process described above. These

mistakes, nevertheless, can attain a relative degree of

effectiveness even when committed at varying degrees of

complexity: from unwitting or semiconscious habitual

abstraction, to conscious yet dogmatic abstraction, to fully

judicious intentional abstraction. Asserting that a fallacy

can have a “degree of commission,” rather than only fully

and logically negated, is itself a practice of processual

thinking and I will address this paradox during the

discussion. This chapter will have two parts. The first will

describe each fallacy of misplaced concreteness, and the

second will describe the degree to which the fallacies may

be committed and result in ineffectiveness or effectiveness.

In each sub-section, I will provide supporting references to

Whitehead’s work, and I will revisit, to more fully engage,

certain challenges to effectiveness from leadership

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literature, particularly “VUCA,” “Sanctuary,” and

“Presencing,” that illustrate manifestations of these

fallacies and their “degrees” of commission. [Please note

that, to turn in this outline in good time, I do not extract

exact references to Whitehead’s text for these and the

remaining concepts. Do know that they are all duly marked in

the primary texts and await full citation in the paper to

come.]

Abstraction Misplaced as Concreteness

(25 pages, 9,000 words)


When one commits a fallacy of misplaced concreteness

one ignores or denies that the basic unit of reality is the

creative experience of the concrescent occasion and that

this actual entity is both medium and mode of a creativity

emanating from pure experience. This fallacy of abstraction

from actual process concreteness can take at least three

forms: the bifurcation of nature, substance-quality

thinking, and simple location.

The fallacy of bifurcation of nature.

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The fallacy of bifurcation separates elements of the

fundamentally dipolar width of grasp in a concrete moment of

creativity, some of which were illustrated in chapter two.

This abstraction from dipolarity denies formative effect

(and purposive lure) for one element by contrast with the

other. In other words, this fallacy dismisses one pole of

becoming as accidental in order to favor selected

explanatory powers of the other. Thus it simplifies, but

erroneously erases, the generative contrasting tension and

the integrative satisfying movement within the decisive,

creative choice of each moment. This section must briefly

touch on, but does not undertake a full discussion of, the

implications this has for abstractions of materiality and

mentality, objects and subjects, epiphenomenalism and causal

dualism, etc.

The fallacy of substance-quality thinking.


The fallacy of substance-quality thinking abstracts

movement and change away from the essential experiential

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nature of a creative cosmos in order to better conceptualize

and manipulate what are assumed to be fixed, solid, non-

volitional entities. For example, within these abstractions,

entities’ qualities are measurable accidents rather than

spontaneous attributes of a private experience influencing

public, shared consequence. Mental dispositions such as

certainty and prediction become possible, as do the

avoidance through ignorance of chaotic elements, such as

emotional turbulence or the abyss of the unknown.

If the actual effectiveness within the cosmos is

experiential and creative, then each entity is an occasion

defined by a choice that necessarily engages the messiness of

uncertainty. The substance-quality abstraction, furthermore,

fails to recognize that choice must arise out of valuations

of relevance, aversion, and judgments of responsiveness and

responsibility within each and every concrete moment of

creativity, no matter how simple or complex its grasp. This

section must briefly touch on, but does not undertake a full

discussion of, the implications this has for abstractions of

subjectivism and representationalism, mechanism and

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constructivism, etc.

The fallacy of simple location.

(Five pages, 1,500 words )

The fallacy of simple location abstracts

interrelatedness away from the essential becoming nature of

an experiential cosmos in order to ease the impossibility of

containing the infinite complexity of importance and

potentiality, unfolding and enfolded, that characterizes the

whole within a single occasion’s decisive felt-

conceptualization.

Effectiveness must include both types of grasp: the

ordering of stability of form and the novelty-seeking of

satisfaction of aim. Furthermore, it must include both types

of organization: ordering endurance and chaotic novelty.

Only then can efforts of accomplishment properly benefit

from the efficacy to be found within the vectors of tendency

held in tension between the habits of located endurance and

the creative impulses of contrastive intensities across the

whole of creativity. This section must briefly touch on, but

does not undertake a full discussion of, the implications

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this has for abstractions of time and space: that reality

happens in fields of influence not on flat planes of

geometric distance between separate “points,” that

progressive creative advance does not happen on determined

trajectories but an ever-emergent vector, that “stages” are

not discrete nor time a substance “within which” each

occasion resides, etc.

Unwitting, Dogmatic, Judicious Commission of the Fallacies

and Higher Modes of Thought

(Second part: 25 pages, 7,500 words)


The fallacies of misplaced concreteness are fallacies

of abstraction from actual, processual reality. Identifying

such modes of thought as fallacious however, does not entail

negating them entirely. Effectiveness is still to be had

within the degrees of unwitting, dogmatic, or judicious

commission of the abstractions from the process nature of

nature. Chapter five will more fully present the higher

modes of concrete thought that makes full use of the

effectiveness of process principles for processual, process-

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relational and process-thoughtful leadership.

Unwitting-habitual commission of fallacy.


Unwitting, unconscious commissions of the fallacies are

largely ineffective, but mysteriously so to the subject,

because the unacknowledged mistakes of bifurcation,

substance-quality, and simple location in time and space

contrast so counter-intuitively with the common-sense

assumptions about choice and effectiveness that saturate

Westernized expectations for reality and adequate response

to that reality.

Dogmatic-insistent commission of fallacy.


Conscious, yet dogmatic, commission of the fallacies

are parochially effective within a narrow relational reach

and a confined span of space-time. Dogmatism supports, for

example, situated power-relations or stabilizing rules or

norms, treating them as durable, inviolate, or insensitive

to the particular. However, these structures or functions

often become unsustainable when confronted with the process-

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actuality of substance-as-experience, larger fields of

relations, more impactful amplitudes of response, or longer

time-scales of change. When this disharmony arises, when

expectations are destabilized, the leader can choose (or be

forced from habit or dogma) to revert to unwitting

confusion, or the leader can implement a cultivated, more

complex, judicious stance to the process reality.

Judicious-conscious commission of fallacy.

(Five pages, 1,500 words )

Conscious, yet judicious, commission of the fallacies

can be moderately effective at much larger scales of

interconnectivity and creative dynamics. Such an abstraction

may, for example, allow a decision-maker to hold on to a

convenient fiction or to make assumptions about a degree of

stability, duration, and explicit certainty (for example,

ceteris paribus) in order to make room for more detailed

understanding of a particular aspect, a more decisive

action, or a more emotionally-stabilizing anticipation.

However, to make judicious abstractions ever more effective

as the iterations build over time often requires some

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capacity for higher-mode processual, process-relational,

process-emergent thought-feeling from which one may make the

judicious abstractive decision, or “cut,” from a felt-sense

of whole-system coherence, the as-yet-unharmonized potential

of the future that wants to emerge, the appropriate

perspective to see an effective depth of “rightness-of-

feel,” etc.

Higher-mode thought-feeling acknowledges Process principles.


Higher-mode feeling-thought-decision-action

acknowledges at least the main principles of process reality

presented in this dissertation: dipolarity of nature and the

ontological principle, the principle of relativity, and the

principle of process. In this sub-section I will consider

more fully whether the appellations for process thought,

namely “processual,” “process-relational,” and “process

thought,” are interchangeable, or whether they subtly

contrast for a more informative understanding of the lived

experience of higher-mode thought-feeling, especially for


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I hold in abeyance until chapter four a discussion of

whether and how higher modes of thought acquire

effectiveness through acknowledgments of the three

principles of process, and furthermore, how three highest

natures of the unitive experience of the whole (the

primordial nature, the consequential nature, and the

superjective nature) might elicit ever higher forms of


Rationalism’s ‘Estimates of Success Are Exaggerated’

(1929/1978, p. 8)

(Two pages, 600 words)

Rationalism often pretends to present fully-formed

certainties, instead of recognizing the essentially

tentative nature of any scheme meant to discriminate.

“Productive thought has proceeded either by the poetic

insight…or by the imaginative elaboration…Progress is always

a transcendence of what is obvious.” (1929/1978, p. 9) For

Whitehead “importance” is the touchstone of the creativity

(effectiveness) necessary for a flourishing “survival, or of

self-enjoyment…’being’ and of ‘well-being’” (p. 9), and only

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by accepting that “rationalism is an adventure in

clarification…in which even partial success has importance”

(p. 9) can one participate in the successes of an

essentially creative nature. I advance a reinterpretation of

certain challenges to effectiveness from leadership

literature, particularly “VUCA,” “Sanctuary,” and

“Presencing,” wondering if they might instead be calls to

adventure that are frequently taboo. These challenges could

be considered paradoxical to conventional approaches to

leadership effectiveness: including the adventures of grief

in strategic failure, joy in managerial love, and fear in

non-violent developmental anarchy.

Chapter Five


When width of grasp creates greater choice for more

effectiveness, then leaders begin to acquire higher modes of

un-bifurcated thought-feeling. These higher modes can be

established through an acceptance of process principles and

by gradually attempting to approach the unattainable yet

increasingly potent natures of the unitive experience from

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whence emerge coherence, harmony, and the most appropriate

outcomes. This chapter, also, will have two parts. The first

will describe higher modes of thought available through the

dipolar nature of concrescent moments, and the second will

describe the natures of the unitive experience (primordial,

consequent, and superjective). In each sub-section, I will

provide supporting references to Whitehead’s work, and I

will revisit, to more fully engage, certain remedies for

effectiveness from leadership literature that illustrate

manifestations of Process principles, such as presence-based

leadership, sensemaking, active inquiry, and learning-

organization theory.

Higher Modes of Thought-Feeling

(Two+ pages, 750 words)

Acknowledging the principles of Process.


In a process world, to lead effectively is to make good

choices from a processual, process-relational, process

thought-feeling orientation that creates, in the moment of

decision, a width of attunement, awareness and perspective

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for ever more coherent, adequate and appropriate choice in

order to become just this satisfaction, now, while

acknowledging a dynamic relationship with the decided

massive past and increasing the invited possibilities for

the present such that one’s aim toward an enjoyable,

sustainable, thriving future. By acknowledging fundamental

Process principles one may more adequately cultivate such an

orientation.

Symbolic reference and imaginative extension.


Whitehead presents a complex yet important discussion,

primarily in Part II, Chapter VIII of Process and Reality

(pp. 168-183) and his lectures on Symbolism: Its Meaning and

Effect (1927), of a “symbolic reference” that synthesizes the

dipolar nature of the concrescent decision into an

“originative freedom.” I will parse his discussion of how

symbolic reference expands further into “imaginative extension”

and leads to consciousness, in order to more fully to

clarify how the nature of higher modes of thought provides

the basis for my interpretation of Whitehead’s philosophy

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for leadership effectiveness, that “width of grasp creates

choice for effectiveness.”

The Highest Natures of Unitive Experience


If all of this is true of leadership, may not we

attempt to approach the nature of attuned, valuing,

perspectival width of grasp that characterizes the unitive

experience of the creative actualization of the whole

process-universe in each moment? Whitehead names this mode

of actualization the primordial nature, the superjective nature, and

the consequent nature of the fullest experience of the creative

absolute. This entitive occasion comprises the totality of

our universe in its timeless moment of form-aim-satisfaction

and in its continually concrescent attuned grasp of each

occasion of the whole. (These are aspects of the nature of

what Whitehead calls “God,” and I will support my reasons

for choosing an alternate appellation, “unitive experience,”

for the purposes of enriching the pursuit of effective leadership

by practitioners, interventionists, researchers, etc.)

Primordial nature.

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If the nature of the universe does indeed create a

generative dipolarity for width of choice, and if we accept

the ontological principle that every occasion is “positively

somewhere, in potency everywhere” (Whitehead, 1929/1978, p.

40), then I posit the question: can leadership develop a

width of presence that resonates with the unitive

experience’s primordial nature of “absolute wealth of

potentiality” (p. 343) for “general creative advance” (p.

344) that lends a “poetic…freedom…[for a] “vision of truth,

beauty, goodness…[and] zest” (p. 345) to this creativity?

Consequent nature.



generative dipolarity for effectiveness, and if we accept

the principle of relativity as “every being is potential for

every other becoming to follow” (Whitehead, 1929/1978, p.

22), then I posit the question: can leadership develop a

width of presence that resonates with the consequent nature of

the unitive experience, a nature that “shares in every

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particular completion, feeling each novelty” (p. 545) giving

each occasion in which the leader participates enough

“perspective…to become free from discordance” (p. 88)

because acting “guide” (p. 88) with a “patient” (p. 346)

“determination…[toward] necessary goodness” (p. 345)?

Superjective nature.



generative dipolarity for leadership in the process sense,

and if we accept the principle of process as “breadth

reacting with intensity” (Whitehead, 1929/1978, p. 16), then

can leadership develop a width of presence that resonates

with the superjective nature of the unitive experience and by

this presence infuse each co-constructive interaction with a

“pragmatic value qualifying transcendent creativity” (p. 87)

that does not enforce a strategy or force an outcome but

achieves success in a participative “weaving by rightness of

feeling” (p. 346) as a “fellow sufferer…[with a] tender care

that nothing is lost” (p. 346)?

Broadest Width of Grasp: Effective Leadership Emulates the

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Breadth of Unitive Experience


Following to its conclusion the argument that, given

the Process nature of the cosmos, effectiveness best derives

from an acknowledgement of the Process principles and

cultivation of higher modes of thought-feeling, then the

higher natures of the unitive experience might indeed prove

to be the best and truest direction of increasing capacities

for increasing capacities for width of grasp in leadership

itself. I advance a reinterpretation of certain remedies for

effectiveness from leadership literature, particularly

presence-based leadership, active inquiry, sensemaking, and

learning-organization theory, likening effectiveness to the

capacity to enact the Good. I wonder if an emulation of

these qualities by which the unitive experience “leads the

world” (to paraphrase Whitehead, 1929/1978, p. 346) means to

engage in patience, peace, poetry and the envisionment of

truth, beauty and goodness. These higher calls to adventure

are frequently taboo, and certainly paradoxical, to

conventional approaches to leadership effectiveness.

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I also will explore the implications of at least three

very recent theoretical and methodological “turns” for an

application of Whitehead’s Process Thought to modes and

mediations of effective leadership. Might these new models

provide ready-made pathways for a Process-Creative

Leadership? Throughout this thesis I have been using works

that have followed the turn to presence-based leadership, and

I will expand on that choice here. I also wonder about the

consonance Process leadership might have with the practice-turn

(e.g., Nicolini, 2012) in the social sciences, and I wonder

about performativity in critical social theory, particularly

its interpretation by the philosopher Judith Butler (1990;

2004b; 2012).

Conclusion


With Width of Grasp Comes Greater Choice for More Effective

Leadership: Process Thought

Depending on what emerges in the body of this

dissertation, this chapter might revisit the familiar

constructs now recast into Process terms: “nature, process,

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concreteness, abstraction, width of grasp, choice,

effective, leadership, organization.”

This chapter summarizes the idea that through higher

modes of thought-feeling the leader may avoid fallacies of

misplaced concreteness and with a subsequent width of grasp

acquire choice for the effectiveness promised by a full

acknowledgment of the fundamental Process principles of

reality.

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Appendix A: Lexicon

(estimated 10 pages)

To avoid the “fallacy of the perfect dictionary” (1938,

p. 235), this glossary of terms is not a definitive

dictionary of usage but a comparative lexicon of terminology

listing quoted treatments from various theorists specific to

this study, much like the Oxford English Dictionary.

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Appendix B: Concrescent Occasion

(estimated 10 pages)

In this appendix I attempt a judiciously abstracted

explanation of the elements and their movements within the

concrescent occasion of becoming, an explication that is the

key to understanding the rest of Whitehead’s Process

Philosophy. I will include graphics if my own devising, ones

that I have used to make my own sense of Whitehead’s

concrescent moment. I will couch this explanation in

language that I might use for a workshop of leadership

scholar-practitioners with an advanced level of interest in

the subject, and I will include citational references to

Whitehead’s work.

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Appendix C: “God,” The Unitive Experience

(estimated 5 pages)

In this appendix I expand on my choice to replace

Whitehead’s word “God” with the phrase “unitive experience”

or “Unitive Experience.”

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Appendix D: Leadership Development Workshop

(estimated 5 pages)

In this appendix I will write a brief treatment of an

imaginary workshop, in which I would take the leader-

attendees through a program of experiential learning to

acquire an introductory understanding before they begin to

apply the above Process approach to one of their concrete,

lived challenges. The workshop will likely take the form of

a workshop preparatory to Scharmer’s action-research

Presencing curriculum, expanding or changing Scharmer’s work

to reflect an awareness of the fallacies of misplaced

concreteness, the principles of Process and the mindful

presence-practice-performative advance of Whitehead’s higher

modes of thought.

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Dissertation Outline Treatment v.2 _February2015

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