962. I quite fail to see how . . .

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I quite fail to see how it could make sense to say, as Hartshorne does, that "[a] metaphysical generality is universal on its appropriate logical level or level of abstractness" ("Categories, Transcendentals, and Creative Experiencing": 328). Unless a supposed metaphysical generality is universal on the most abstract level conceivable, it neither is nor could be, properly, "a metaphysical generality."

One of the advantages, arguably, of Duns Scotus' concept of "disjunctive" transcendental properties is that it allows one to say what Hartshorne presumably wants to say without saying it in the same confusing way, i.e., as though there are different levels of metaphysical abstractness, some metaphysical generalities being more (or less) abstract than others. The relevant difference is not a difference of levels; it is a difference of types. And all types, insofar as they are properly metaphysical (or ontological) at all, are and must be on the same level of abstractness.

Hartshorne himself admits this in so many words when he (1) identifies potentialities with the more or less abstract; and (2) argues that "[o]n any showing there is a division of potentialities into two radically different levels [sic!]: the level which contains the categories, those utterly general dimensions of reality . . . without which as at least implicitly involved nothing at all can be conceived; and the level of specific qualities, from which it seems possible really to abstract entirely and still have meaning. . . ." (WP: 94-97).

He may also be said to admit it implicitly when he typically grants that, simply as abstract concepts, "concreteness" and "abstractness" are related symmetrically, each requiring the other if either is to be a meaningful concept; and that it is only when one adverts to "concrete things or realities," as distinct from "concreteness" and "abstractness" as abstract concepts, that the important asymmetry between them becomes apparent—namely, because "concreteness . . . is the inclusive idea" (cf., e.g., "Duality versus Dualism and Monism": 52-55).

5 February 1998