The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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Isn't there a connection between Hägerstrom's description of metaphysics as the view "which makes of reality as such – reality itself – something real" and Whitehead's statement that "[i]n all philosophic theory there is an ultimate which is actual in virtue of its accidents," although in some monistic philosophies "the ultimate is illegitimately allowed a final 'eminent' reality, beyond that ascribed to any of its accidents" (Nygren: 46; PRc: 7)?

Assuming that there is some connection, and that, in fact, Hagerstrom and Whitehead are both talking about the same fallacy, I also see some differences that I judge to be important. One is that Hägerstrom takes the fallacy in question to be characteristic of all metaphysics, while Whitehead takes it to characterize only some monistic philosophies. Another is that, whereas Hägerstrom operates with only the concept "reality," Whitehead operates with the concept "actuality" as well as (we may infer) "reality." The advantage of doing this, of course, is that one need not follow Hägerstrom in simply denying that reality as such, or reality itself, is something real, even though one may very well deny that it is something actual.

By the way, isn't the fallacy that both philosophers are talking about yet another case of "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness"?

15 January 1998

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