928. Perhaps, in part, because . . .

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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."

One 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 question 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.

One of the principles of Hartshorne's philosophizing is that formulations of the necessary truths of metaphysics, although empirically unfalsifiable, can nevertheless be falsified in a way by being shown to be meaningless—and that either by being shown to be incoherent, or contradictory in meaning, or by being shown to have no meaning, or none clear enough to mean anything definite. If I'm right, the problem with any metaphysical, as distinct from a merely empirical, psychicalism is not that it is incoherent but that it is empty, as long, at least, as it is taken to be constituted by "the generalized anthropomorphic analogy" yielding concepts like "experience as such or in general," "mind generically," and so on. For if such a psychicalism both avoids committing the pathetic fallacy—which is to say, (tacitly) using psychical terms not as universal variables, but rather as merely local ones—and is not, in fact, simply a merely symbolic or metaphorical way of asserting what a proper transcendental metaphysics asserts literally—if it manages to be neither of these, it's only because it's sufficiently lacking in any clear meaning to say nothing definite at all. "Experience as such or in general" I take to be a perfect example of just such a meaningless phrase.

24 April 2005