The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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Hartshorne holds—understandably—that "metaphysical abstractions entail their own mutual relations, including their relation to actuality, which is one of them" (PCH: 572). I take him to mean by this that abstractions at the level of metaphysical generality are all so intrinsically related or interconnected that anyone of them entails all of the others, even as each of them, in turn, entails it together with all of the others.

But if this is his meaning, I do not think he expresses himself very effectively when he says that "the unconditionally necessary consists of intrinsic relationships connecting abstractions so general that any and every possible state of affairs will instantiate them" (PCH: 658). He would have better written that "the unconditionally necessary consists of intrinsically related or interconnected abstractions so general that any and every possible state of affairs will instantiate them."

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