The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

scanned pdf

Hartshorne allows, significantly, that "the main advantages" of his doctrine of psychicalism "are philosophical, in enabling us to arrive at a view of life and nature in which the results of science are given their significance along with the values with which art, ethics, and religion are concerned" ("Physics and Psychics": 92).

The understanding of "philosophical" implied by this statement confirms that what Hartshorne means by a philosophical view of life and nature is rather closer to what Scholz distinguishes as a "real-philosophical," than to a "transcendental-philosophical," view. If it is to give their significance to "the results of science," a philosophical view of life and nature evidently has to do with "this actual world," as distinct from "every possible world," and therefore is "synthetic," as distinct from "analytic." Likewise, if a philosophical view is also to give their significance to "the values with which art, ethics, and religion are concerned," it evidently belongs more to "the realm of proclamation" than to "the realm of research" (i.e., strenge Wissenschaft). And so on.

But, then, why hold out for psychicalism's being a properly metaphysical, or ontological, position -- as distinct from really being a counterpart to Post's attempt to develop a metaphysics within the limits of physics alone, i.e., an attempt to develop a metaphysics within the limits of psychics alone? As true as it may be (indeed, must be!) that Hartshorne's position, no less than Post's, necessarily presupposes and implies a properly transcendental metaphysics, it itself is really something very different, although, ironically, Hartshorne doesn't appear to be very clear about this.

21 July 2008

  • No labels