1036. There is, on the face of it, a contradiction . . .

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There is, on the face of it, a contradiction between the following statements of Hartshorne's.

". . . there is direct awareness of other minds. One intuits . . . the pleasant and unpleasant feelings of one's own bodily cells. They in their vastly inferior fashion feel our feelings, and, analogously, we feel God's feelings; and God in vastly, indeed ideally, superior fashion feels ours" (PCH: 617).

". . . we intuit [dynamic singulars] directly in our own case except in dreamless sleep, and by easy analogy perceive in the other higher animals. The analogy applies to single-celled animals and plants and to animal and plant cells, but probably not to multicellular plants, and surely not to mountains. Psychicalism extends it [sc. the analogy] below cells to molecules, atoms, and particles, but not to crystals" (PCH: 679).

"We must . . . find analogies between the divine, which we do not obviously experience as such, and things that we do obviously so experience, for instance, persons and other higher animals" (PCH: 598).

". . . theism is transempirical, though remaining experiential. Without percepts there are no concepts, and no percept could compell [sic] most of us to believe in the existence of God" (PCH: 596).

The contradiction between these statements is evidently this: on the one hand, there is the claim that we have a direct awareness or intuition of minds other than our own—those constituting our own bodily cells and, presumably, that constituting God; on the other hand, there is the (implied) claim that we directly intuit dynamic singulars only in our own case, although we perceive, or experience, them in the case of others, albeit not directly, but by analogy.

How is this contradiction to be explained? I believe only in this way: while we do indeed have direct awareness or intuition of concrete realities other than our own reality as experiencing selves or minds, it is not obviously as other minds that we are directly aware of or intuit them. In fact, it is only ourselves that we are directly aware of or intuit as minds, since even our experience of such other things as we obviously experience as minded is not a matter of direct awareness or intuition but of analogy, even if "easy analogy." Therefore, when Hartshorne says "there is direct awareness of other minds," this is true only if one adds, "but not as minds." Insofar as we have experience of other minds as such—whether other persons or higher animals or, more problematically, cells, and, more problematically       still, molecules, atoms, and particles, and, at the far opposite extreme, God—we have such experience, not as a matter of direct awareness, but only by (more or less "easy") analogy with the only mind of which we are directly aware as such—our own.

The question, however is as to the nature of this analogy, particularly in its (not "easy," but) "hard," or more problematic, extensions to the least and the greatest concrete realities respectively. Is it a proper "analogy," in Hartshorne's own carefully defined sense of this term, or is it simply what he distinguishes as a "symbol," which needs to be recognized and employed as such without being confused with a proper "analogy" (however fundamental a symbol it may be relative to others)?