By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
Just as an experience is always an experience of--of something other than the experience itself-so a thought is always a thought about-about something other than the thought itself. In this sense, a thought is always about reality, in that it is always about something real independently of the thought itself. necessarily true, provided that the something thought about could not conceivably be otherwise than it is thought to be-the proof of this being that the contradictory thought is also self-contradictory and therefore not merely false, but necessarily false.
A thought about reality in this sense may be true or false, depending on whether or not the something thought about is as it is thought to be. Also, a thought about reality may be not merely true but
Among such thoughts about reality as are thus proved to be necessarily true are those expressed by the following three statements: 1.
if they are anything at all, is to be not merely abstractly, but
The same conclusion follows from the principle-if you will, "the Aristotelian principle," or what Whitehead calls "the ontological principle"that anything abstractly real, like the utterly abstract property of being something real, can never be real simply in itself, but is always real only in thatconcretely, real. Consequently, if "There is something real" expresses a thought that is necessarily true, the statement, "There is something concretely rea!," like the statement, 'There is something abstractly real," expresses a thought that could only be true. it is somehow instantiated in something concretely reaL Thus, even as anything concretely real somehow instantiates and hence requires the utterly abstract properties of being real and of being concretely real, so these utterly abstract properties must be somehow instantiated in, and hence in turn require, some concretely real thing, although anything concretely real will do, no particular concrete reality being necessary. Ad
My contention is that the divine is to the nondivine as "all" is to "some." Insofar, then, as being something divinely real and being something nondivinely real are alike ways of being something not merely abstractly but concretely real, to be something divinely real is not only to be something that is real for3. It will be clear from what has been said that to be something real in the sense in which anything real is so is to be real for something else that is real in the same completely general sense. Also clear is that to be something real in the more specific sense of concretely real is not only to be something that is real for something else but also something for which other things are real, just as to be, by contrast, something real in the more specific sense of abstractly real is to be real for something else without also being something for which other things are real. But now the question obviously raised by the thought expressed in the third statement is, What is it to be something divinely real, on the one hand, and something nondivinely real, on the other? all other things for which other things are real, Le., for all concretely real things, but also to be something for which all other things are real, be they concretely or merely abstractly real. By contrast, to be something
nondivinely real is to be something that is real for only
But why is
Summer 1996; rev. 24 May 1999some other things for which other things are real, Le., for only some concretely real things, and also to be something for which only some other things are real, be they concretely or merely abstractly real themselves. it necessarily true that there is something divinely real as well as something nondivinely real? If the divinely real is to the nondivinely real as "all" is to "some," we may say just as truly that they are to one another as whole is to part. But, then, just as there can be no whole without part(s), so there can be no part(s) without whole. Thus there cannot be anything divinely real unless there is something nondivinely real; and, conversely, there cannot be anything nondivinely real unless there is something divinely reaL This symmetry, however, is balanced by an asymmetry similar to that mentioned above (Ad 2). For while the nondivinely real and the divinely real necessarily require one another, the divinely real's requirement is satisfied simply by there being some nondivinely real thing(s), no particular nondivine thing(s) being required. On the contrary, there can be one, and only one thing, that satisfies the nondivinely real's requirement that there be something divinely real-namely, the one and only necessarily existent whole of reality, all of whose parts exist merely contingently even though it is not contingent but necessary that there be some such parts.