By Schubert Ogden
Possibility is futurity, the indefiniteness/ indeterminateness of what, given the present, not onJy can be but also must be further defined/ determined by successor presents. Thus possibility/ futurity is only an aspect of actualities as such, as concretes, i.e., events and individuals, and also aggregates/ composites thereof. Each event/ state of an individual has data whose futures it further defines/ determines. And it itself will be a datum in events/ states of individuals that are anticipated by its future, although not fully defined/ determined thereby.
So every actuality / concrete is, in one aspect, definite/ determinate, while, in another aspect, it is indefinite/ indeterminate// definable/ determinabJe. Relative to its past, it is definite/ determinate, in that it has somehow, resolved the indefiniteness/ indeterminateness// definabiJity/ determinability bequeathed to it by its past for further definition/ determination. But relative to its future, it itself bequeaths a certain indefiniteness/ indeterminateness// definability/ determinability that its successor presents will in tum have to resolve, each by its own self-determination.
Whereas a concrete is not continuous, but discontinuous, the possible ways in which a concrete can be succeeded, or objectified, by other concretes are continuous, in that they form a continuous range. Any ordinary abstract, then, is simply a still wider range of continuous possibilities-a species being a wider range than an individuality (= individual essence), a genus being a wider range than a species, and a category being a still wider range than a genus.
An extraordinary abstract is the widest range of continuous possibilities conceivable, and therefore an unlimited range. There is literally an infinite number of possible ways in which it can be succeeded or objectified, by concretes as well as, in their different ways, by ordinary abstracts--from categories through genera and species to individualities (= individual essences).
IfGod simply as such--as the all-worshipful and unsurpassable, and therefore universal, individual-is, in Hartshorne's phrase, "modally allinclusive," and so excludes, or is competitive with, absolutely nothing, either actual or possible, then the range of continuous possibilities for God to be somehow succeeded or objectified qua existent, or actualized merely someho'w, has to be as infinite as for any other transcendental. In other words, the infinitude of God's "primordial nature" (or as, in Peirce's term, "First") is a function of God's being by nature utterly non-exclusive, or non-competitive. Thus Whitehead says, rightly, "We must conceive the Divine Eros as the active entertainment of all ideals, with the urge to their finite realization, each in its due season. Th~s a process must be inherent in God's nature whereby IGod'sl infinity is acquiring realization" (AI: 357; italics added).
The reason, however, why the nature of things is, in the final analysis, tragic as well as beautiful is that, as Whitehead argues, "every occasion of actuality is in itsOWIl nature finite. There is no totality which is the harmony of all perfections. Whatever is realized in anyone occasion of experience necessarily excludes the unbounded welter of contrary possibilities. There are always 'others' which might have been and are not" (AI: 356; or, as Hartshorne puts it, "No illfima species of possibility ever recurs" IRSP: 1181). In other words, there is, inevitably, tragic loss: God's infinity simply cannot acquire realization! In this sense, \Vhitehead says, "At the heart of the nature of things, there are always the dream of youth and the harvest of tragedy. The Adventure of the Universe starts with the dream and reaps tragic Beauty" (AI: 381).
So, if God simply as such, as existent, and therefore actualizedsomehow, although in no particular hmu, excludes nothing and is competitive with nothing, God qua actualized, and hence particularized I~this, rather than in lhat, particular halO, is exciusive and competitive. Consequently, the range of continuous possibilities for succeeding or objectifying God so actualized and particularized is not unlimited, but limited. It is limited, namely, by the particular de facto order that il lies in the nature of God-not simply as Cod, and as therefore Cod of :::'OIllC world only, but as God of this, that, or the olher particular world-to impose on _every new successor world now in process of coming into being. In this sense,it is not God as "primordial" ("First") or even as "consequent" ("Second"), but God as "superject" ('Third") that is rightly said to be "the principJe of concretion--the principle whereby," as Whitehead says, "there is initiated a definite outcome from a situation otherwise riddled with ambiguity" _(PRc: 345).
September] 995; rev. 16 October 2009