By Schubert Ogden
...
1. Analysis discloses that "real" and its cognates are systematically ambig
uous ambiguous, in that, while it has a "field-invariant force," it has "field-depend
ent dependent standards." This is not surprising, of course, because the same syste
matic systematic ambiguity attends "true" and its cognates, with which "real" and its
cognates its cognates are correlative. For this reason; then, one could say that the dis
tinction distinction between "being-in-itself" and "meaning-for-us" is misleading, insofar
as insofar as it implies, or appears to imply, that "reality" is not thus systematically
ambiguous systematically ambiguous, and hence field-dependent as well as field-invariant.
1. Analysis discloses that "real" and its cognates are systematically ambiguous, in that, while it has a "field-invariant force," it has "field-dependent standards." This is not surprising, of course, because the same systematic ambiguity attends "true" and its cognates, with which "real" and its cognates are correlative. For this reason; then, one could say that the distinction between "being-in-itself" and "meaning-for-us" is misleading, insofar as it implies, or appears to imply, that "reality" is not thus systematically ambiguous, and hence field-dependent as well as field-invariant.
...
5. An analogy may be useful. The criteria appropriate for common sense talk about what is real allows one to say of the sun at sunset that it is "really red." To deny that such talk is about the real, on the ground that yet other criteria-those of the physicist, say-require one to say that the sun at sunset is "really yellow" is simply to shift the discussion to another mode of reasoning. What the religious mode of reasoning means by ultimate reality is what confronts us with the possibility of authentic self-understanding. To deny that the talk involved in the religious mode of reasoning is about the real, on the ground that yet other criteria-those of the metaphysician, sayrequire of the metaphysician, say, require one to say that ultimate reality is the universal individual that is the ground and end of all other individuals and events, etc., is, again, simply to shift the discussion to another mode of reasoning.
...