997. Hartshorne holds that "prehending . . .

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Hartshorne holds that "[p]rehending is ultimate, inherent in the meaning of psychical terms: experiencing, perceiving, feeling, remembering" (PCH: 718). But what is the moral of this?

I hold that the moral is twofold: (1) that what is "inherent in" the meaning of psychical terms can and should be analyzed out of their meaning by the proper metaphysical method of analyzing the necessary presuppositions, or the necessary conditions of the possibility, of the experienced phenomena whence their meaning can alone be derived; and (2) that insofar as "prehension" is itself understood to be a "psychical term;" albeit a more, rather than a less, general one, it, too, needs to be subjected to proper metaphysical analysis, in the sense of analyzing the necessary presuppositions, or the necessary conditions of the possibility, of the experienced phenomenon from which its meaning is also perforce derived.

Elsewhere Hartshorne speaks of ''feeling as the universal aspect of the psychical." He evidently understands "feeling" as "including an at least slight aspect of memory (present feeling of past feelings) and a minimal sense (Whitehead's 'mentality') of open possibilities, and 'decision' among them" (PCH: 591).

Significantly, he can speak of an actual entity as "prehensive or sentient." He can also refer to "mind (in the general sense of at least sentient or affective experience)" (PCH: 699; cf. also 642: "What Whitehead calls 'mentality' is, in minimal cases, only a feeling, however rudimentary and unconceptual, of futurity or real possibility. All subjects in some way and degree have a feeling of past and future.")

It is also significant, I think, that Hartshorne holds that to be "unprehensive" is to be "totally without feeling others' feeling." Note his distinction between "causally creative experience" and "prehensive experience" (PCH: 731).