1018. One of the things that Hartshorne . . .

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1. One of the things that Hartshorne tends to confuse—or not sufficiently to clarify and consistently to acknowledge—is the dual character of what we properly mean by "experience." Among the unfortunate consequences of this are:
(1) taking the problem apparently posed by relativity theory for a neoclassical metaphysics to be more serious than it is;
(2) tending to assume the posture of traditional "rationalism," with its talk of "innate ideas," etc., instead of demonstrating that what is indicated is, rather, a nontraditional "empiricism," or, really, "experientialism";
(3) thinking and speaking paradoxically of God as "empirically observable";
(4) obscuring the insight that the place or role of faith is fundamental; and
(5) introducing confusion by using such terms as "short-term memory," which, if apt at all, is a "disguised comparison" (Toulmin).

The point to be insisted on (in Lewis's terminology) is that, by reason of the dual character of experience, "knowledge" both does and does not mean "identity of quality or nature between subject and object," as distinct from "successful prediction and control" (Mind and the World Order: 410 f.). Whatever the dangers of dualism, the point must be made that there is a "vertical" as well as a "horizontal" dimension to experience, and hence also to knowledge. Of course, so far as the vertical dimension is only relatively a priori, i.e., simply the historically-socially-culturally constituted "background" or network of concepts whereby we organize the horizontal dimension so as to succeed in predicting and controlling, it is still not properly "metaphysical."

2. Another difficulty is Hartshorne's argument for panpsychism, which, so far as I can see, typically involves an invalid conversion. He argues, for example, "To be relative is to take other things into account, to allow them to make a difference to oneself, in some sense to care about them" (CSPM: 233, 55). But, surely, the question is whether this or, rather, the converse line of arguing is valid. That what we ordinarily mean by "care" entails relativity is, in any case, more obvious than that what we ordinarily mean by "relativity" entails care "in some sense" of the word. Of course, on the assumption of panpsychicism, or psychicalism, the converse entailment also holds. But the whole issue is just why anyone should make any such assumption or, in other words, why anyone should accept psychicalism.

Lewis says, rightly, that "determination by relation to value" is "one essential characteristic of persons" (410). But, again, the question is whether this should be read solely, "If x is a person, x is determined by relation to value," or also, "If, and only if, x is (in some sense) a person, is x determined by relation to value." Psychicalism, by definition, takes the conditional to be a biconditional. But the issue is, with what right does it do so?

Moreover, can it not be shown that, to the extent that the idea of a thing's "experiencing," or being "sentient," is sufficiently generalized to be a properly "cosmic," as distinct from a merely "local," variable, its meaning cannot possibly be adequately distinguished without logical fallacy from that of the purely formal, transcendental idea of the thing's being "relative," or "internally (self-) relating"? If this can be shown, the hypothesis that seems to me very much worth exploring is whether science and metaphysics are not alike in both abstracting—in different ways—from the qualitatively given in experience: science, by taking the sensuously given as sign of yet other possible sense experiences that will ensue, given certain human actions, and thus as sign of certain purely formal relations between contingently existing realities; and metaphysics, by taking the nonsensuously given as but a value (even if, for human experience, the only clearly given value) of certain purely formal, transcendental variables definitive of reality necessarily or simply as such. In short, cognition in the strict sense of intellection, whether that of science or that of metaphysics, necessarily abstracts from the qualitative in experience, whose role as such is not to be known but to be created and enjoyed, even though knowledge, strictly and properly so-called, may in some ways enhance both its creation and its enjoyment.

Anyhow, one thing is clear to me: the only alternative to committing the pathetic fallacy at some point, or to falling into an unwarranted anthropomorphism, is a so-called analogical use of psychical terms, on which their meaning, if any, cannot be distinguished, except verbally, from that of the purely formal, transcendental concepts that any meaningful discourse, including any meaningful analogical discourse, necessarily presupposes.

3. Hartshorne often says something more or less like this: "Atheism is at best a confusion; theism or positivism is the choice we have to make" ("How Some Speak and Yet Do Not Speak of God": 274). But this way of speaking is, at best, elliptical, because, as Hartshorne himself now and again allows (see, e.g., CSPM: 257), atheism as well as theism can be "a priori," in which case it may indeed be indistinguishable at a certain point from positivism. The significance of the ontological argument is to have clarified the nature of the theistic issue—as a priori or nothing—and thus to have shown that atheism and theism alike must either be a priori only or else beside the point.

4. Hartshorne asks: "Is not the sense of reality social through and through? What is it to recognize a process, other than one's own actual experience, as also actual, if it is not to attribute to that process some sort of inner life, value, feeling, and memory (here the causal nexus comes in) of its own?"

I feel the force of such rhetorical questions, and I concede at once that they seem to me to be more than sufficient to counteract both metaphysical materialism and metaphysical dualism. But my question is whether they're sufficient, as Hartshorne seems to think, to establish metaphysical idealism Ξ panpsychism Ξ psychicalism.

The pertinent point, to my mind, is that "social" admits of analysis at both a formal and a material level. Formally, "social" entails the notion of relations, both internal and external in character, in that to be social is, in the most abstract sense, to be related-ideally, to be related internally as well as externally. But materially, "social" entails considerably more than this – for example, if not human, then at least animal characteristics and capacities, so that to be social in the material sense of the word is to be internally related in a human, quasi-human, or, at the least, animal way. This being so, however, the answers to Hartshorne's questions are not nearly so obvious as he implies in asking them as he does. Since his questions are, in effect, ambiguous, so are the answers to them. Yes, the sense of reality is sociaI through and through, in that my sense that something else is real is my sense that, as James puts it, it is something that we in some way find ourselves obliged to take account of—just as what it means to recognize something else as actual (and thus as more than merely real) is to attribute to it internal as well as external relations to at least some other real things. But, then, No, the sense of reality is not social through and through if that means that, whenever I sense something to be real, I sense that it must be taken account of—or, if also actual, is itself capable of taking account of others—in something like the way in which I must take account of myself and others like me.

Significantly, Hartshorne himself says in at least one place: "Whether these common structural and qualitative dimensions are called psychic is merely a matter of verbal taste. The point is simply whether there is a common ultimate system of possible differences in terms of which the world may be indefinitely understood" ("Metaphysics for Positivists": 302).

5. Hartshorne claims that he rejects "the old distinction between general and special metaphysics, unless the last means empirical cosmology" (CSPM: 39). But, surely, a properly theistic—as distinct from a properly pantheistic—metaphysics requires distinguishing in some sense between (1) God; (2) world; and (3) self, and hence, to that extent, also requires distinguishing between theology, cosmology, and psychology Ξ anthropology. I suspect the same kind of reasoning Hartshorne himself urges against Tillich's denial that God exists, is a being, and so on, can be urged, mutatis mutandis, against his own rejection of the distinction between general and special metaphysics.

6. To what extent is Hartshorne's usual polemic against the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo [a Deo] the result of his failing to analyze the ambiguity of this doctrine and to apply his own distinction between "individual" and "event" (or however he expresses the distinction between "existent" and "actual state")? And how is it related to his tendency to overstate his own view by such assertions as that "Experience as emergent synthesis feeds on its own previous products, and on nothing else whatever" (CSPM: 8; cf. 12: "only freedom exists to limit freedom")?

Of course, "even God's creativity is his higher form of emergent synthesis, or response to stimuli" (12). But, radically unlike everything else, there is that in God's creativity, or in God as causally efficacious, that is not and could not be itself a "product" of creative synthesis as such; and the abiding legitimacy of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo a Deo is precisely to express this truth.