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Perhaps, in part, because of my Auseinandersetzung with Post, but also because of my recent re-reading of Scholz, I've more and more asked myself whether Hartshorne's psychicalism (very much as Post's physicalism?) may not be, in reality, merely what I've called "a speculative scientific cosmology" (Doing Theology Today: 201), or what Scholz calls either a "real-philosophical metaphysics of nature," or "an ontology of the actual world," as distinct from what he means by "metaphysics as a strict science," or philosophy in its "transcendental-philosophical," rather than "real-philosophical," aspect (Metaphysik als strenge Wissenschaft: 162 H., 181), or from what I mean by a "transcendental metaphysics."

Wiki MarkupOne thing is clear: Hartshorne again and again talks about "the synthesis of the sciences," and about psychology, not physics, as the ultimate science. Thus he can conclude, for example, "Psychology. . . holds the key to the synthesis of the sciences, not physics or biology. . . . \ [I\]t is biology, with its principle of evolution, which has furnished the grand framework of all natural knowledge; will it not be psychology, with its principles of love, creativity, and the striving for harmony, which will furnish the explanation of evolution?" ("Mind as Memory and Creative Love": 462).

In any case, I still believe I have shown that his argument for psychicalism fails at two points: (1) that many of his considerations are at best able to establish a speculatively scientific cosmological, as distinct from a strictly metaphysical, conclusion; and (2) that the only consideration, finally, that would suffice to establish psychicalism as a strictly metaphysical conclusion -- namely, immediate knowledge of God as psychical -- logically cannot be provided, either by him or by anyone else (Doing Theology Today: 201 ff.). I've also shown, I believe, (1) that his argument that psychicalism cannot be empirically falsified does not suffice to show that psychicalism is metaphysically true unless psychical terms are already known to have infinite scope of application, which is the very thing in question; (2) that there is a very big logical difference between "what acts as one feels as one" and "only what acts as one feels as one," and that the first involves petitio principii; and (3) that his argument from direct experience of the feelings of our bodily cells is a clear case of overinterpretation that likewise begs the questior after all. But this I take to be yet another indication that it is, in truth, some kind of a tertium quid in a context where tertium non datur is the rule.

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