Page History

scanned pdf

Wiki MarkupHartshorne holds that "\[p\]rehending is ultimate, inherent in the meaning of psychical terms: experiencing, perceiving, feeling, remembering" (_PCH_: 718). But what is the moral of this?

I hold that the moral is twofold: (1) that what is "inherent in" the meaning of psychical terms can and should be analyzed out of their meaning by the proper metaphysical method of analyzing the necessary presuppositions, or the necessary conditions of the possibility, of the experienced phenomena whence their meaning can alone be derived; and (2) that insofar as "prehension" is itself understood to be a "psychical term;" albeit a more, rather than a less, general one, it, too, needs to be subjected to proper metaphysical analysis, in the sense of analyzing the necessary presuppositions, or the necessary conditions of the possibility, of the experienced phenomenon from which its meaning is also perforce derived.

...