Is there something that it is like to be what orders and evaluates all possible pure potentials?

You’re brushing up against the boundary between philosophy of mind and metaphysics.

Whitehead’s Framework

• In Whitehead’s system, God’s primordial nature is what orders and evaluates all eternal objects (pure potentials).

• Eternal objects themselves are not conscious; they are abstract forms.

• God’s envisagement of them is not described as a subjective “experience” in the way creatures have experiences. It’s more like a timeless valuation — a cosmic ordering principle.

“Is there something it is like?”

This phrase echoes Thomas Nagel’s famous question: “What is it like to be a bat?” — pointing to subjective consciousness.

• For finite beings (like us), there is something it is like to be conscious.

• For Whitehead’s God, however, the primordial nature is not experiential in the same way. It is conceptual valuation, not sensory or affective experience.

• The consequent nature of God does involve feeling the world — here Whitehead does attribute something akin to experience, since God prehends all actual occasions.

Possible Interpretations

• Strict Whiteheadian view: There is not “something it is like” to be the primordial ordering of potentials, because this is not consciousness but valuation.

• Broader philosophical analogy: If one stretches Nagel’s idea, one might say there is something it is like — but it would be utterly unlike creaturely experience. It would be the “feeling” of infinite possibility, ordered into harmony.

• Mystical resonance: Some thinkers interpret this as akin to the “mind of God” in which all forms exist timelessly. In that sense, there could be a kind of “cosmic awareness” of pure potentiality.

Summary

• God’s primordial nature: ordering and evaluating, but not experiential in the creaturely sense.

• God’s consequent nature: does involve feeling the world, so here one could say there is something it is like — the experience of all actual occasions integrated into harmony.

So the answer depends on which “nature of God” you mean. For the primordial ordering of potentials, Whitehead would likely say no, it is not like consciousness. For the consequent nature, yes, there is something it is like — the experience of the world in its totality.

Would you like me to sketch how this distinction between primordial and consequent natures of God parallels modern debates about information vs consciousness (like in Integrated Information Theory or panpsychism)? That could connect Whitehead’s metaphysics to contemporary philosophy of mind.