1030. According to Hartshorne, a metaphysics is . . .

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1. According to Hartshorne, "a metaphysics" is "an a priori analysis (which does not mean analysis unrelated to experience, but analysis related to the strictly general traits of experience)" (Man's Vision of God: 29). Elsewhere he explains that to avoid "the fallacy of pure empiricism" is not to "desert experience" but rather to "recognize those elements in experience that have metaphysical generality, that are valid of all experience and all objects" (Ibid.: 53, n. 5). Yet again, he argues that "the way to deal with controversial matters is to start from the least controversial experiences and, by the application of formal, deductively powerful structures, which are also neutral to the controversies, test the relation of the more controverted ideas to those experiences. This is the general rational method, and it includes more than what is usually meant by empirical, for the experiences which are important in philosophy are observations not of particulars but of the dimensions of experience as such, its temporal character, its character as 'purposive,' 'emotional,' more or less 'harmonious,' 'discordant,' and the like. Philosophy is concerned with experiences which at least claim to be universal and fundamental—just as religious experience involves at least the feeling that 'God' is relevant to and involved in all experience and all existence. The problem is not to generalize from such experiences and their claims, but to see whether the complete generality already in them, as a semblance at least, is or is not genuine, to see whether one can successfully, and with all implications in mind, deny their claim to generality. It seems evident, for instance, that all existence has value, for at every moment one values all of it that he thinks of and hence is interested in—that is, he values whatever he can mean by—'all of it.' The problem is to clear this apparent insight of irrelevant details, to see what it could conceivably imply, and to relate it to other insights of the kind. To assume that this must not 'be the philosophical method is to assume definite answers to certain philosophical questions. To assume that this method should be given a trial is merely to allow such answers and their negatives to be adequately considered" (Ibid.: 62 f.).

2. It becomes clear from the third passage that, while philosophy appeals to experiences, the experiences that are important for it are observations, and, therefore, experiences, of experience itself—and, more exactly, of "the dimensions of experience as such," which is to say, "the strictly general traits of experience," or "those elements in experience that have metaphysical generality, that are valid of all experience and all objects." In other words, carefully reading these passages together makes clear that, in Hartshorne's view, philosophy differs from science not only in being more general but also in having a different datum, or different data—namely, our own experiencing itself as privileged sample of reality itself.

3. That there can be such a difference is grounded in the fact that experience has different aspects. "In actual experience, mind and matter are together, namely, in our experiences. If we know matter at all, we somehow perceive it. But we also perceive mind, for at each moment we are aware both of physical things and of our own experiences, feelings, thoughts, desires, and so on. Thus both minds (I use the word 'mind' to refer to the reality of experiences) and bodies are together as things given in human experiences. Every experience has an aspect of sense perception, and also an aspect of self-awareness, or awareness of experience itself. The latter includes, or perhaps consists, [sic] in memory—in part, 'immediate memory,' the sense of just having felt or sensed or thought a certain something . . . An experience is somehow a unity of 'physical,' and 'psychical.' But experience is just what we mean by the 'psychical.' So it seems that the universal concept is that of mind rather than of matter" (Whitehead's Philosophy: 114).

4. This same duality in experience is reflected in Hartshorne's discussions of anthropomorphism. "Anthropomorphism has been shown to be one horn of a not easily evaded dilemma: either we assimilate things to our own human experience and nature, and so perhaps fail to appreciate the extent of their differences from us, or we try to interpret them quite apart from our experience and nature, and then find that this is the same as having no idea of them at all. The only obvious complete alternative to anthropomorphism is the doctrine of an absolutely unknowable, a 'thing in itself.' What things are for us, what we can get out of them, do with them, enjoy in the experience of them, that we can know. Also, what they may be as analogous to ourselves, like us, knowing, willing, loving beings—though perhaps less or more knowing, willing less or more powerfully, loving less or more comprehensively—all this we can conceive. But how we can even significantly ask, What can things be, neither as values to us nor as beings conceivable by analogy to us? has proved of the utmost difficulty to explain" (Man's Vision of God: 88).

5. The only issue is whether it is only, or primarily, by analogy to ourselves that we must conceive other beings insofar as they are more than values to us. One can maintain, instead, that the proper way to conceive other beings—so far, at least, as metaphysics is concerned—is as exemplifying, or instantiating, the same formal structure of concreteness as such that is the necessary condition of the possibility of our own being as knowing, willing, loving beings. Our being as such, as specifically human, is given as simply one special case, example, or instance, however privileged, of this structure. Moreover, anything that could be conceived to be analogous to us would eo ipso be a special case, example, or instance, of this structure. Indeed, if the meanings of the terms used to characterize our being—"knowing," "willing," "loving"—are generalized sufficiently to make them properly metaphysical terms, applicable somehow to any being whatsoever, from the least conceivable to the greatest conceivable, it seems questionable whether they can be anything more than symbolic or metaphorical ways of characterizing the structure of concreteness as such. To say that another being knows, wills, and loves analogously to the way in which we do either falls short of being a properly metaphysical statement about the other being or else is simply a symbolic way of saying what can be said literally by saying that the being in question is concrete and, therefore, somehow exemplifies or instantiates the same structure of concreteness also exemplified or instantiated by our being the knowing, willing, and loving beings we experience ourselves to be.