The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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 Bracken's criticism of Nishida for "idealizing" the data of experience (104) evidently parallels my criticism of Hartshorne's psychicalism It is indeed "sufficient" to say that "the same ontological activity which is at work in the self-constitution of human consciousness is likewise at work in the self-constitution of the objects of human consciousness. . . . What is solely important is that human consciousness and the objects of human consciousness are emergent out of a common ontological ground which is pure activity." d. also 97: "a principle for entities in dynamic interrelation") as itself "ln activity," even if "an ontological activity." But one can quite avoid or overcome this fallacy and still make Bracken's point against "idealizing," i.e., giving an idealistic interpretation of, the data of experience, by saying simply that the same transcendental concepts suffice to understand both the instance of concrescence that is the self-constitution of human consciousness and any of the other instances of concrescence self-constitution) that happen to become the objects of human consciousness.

Of course, this formulation involves Bracken's characteristic way of committing the fallacy of misplaced concreteness by talking of what can be properly spoken of only as an extremely abstract "principle of existence and activity" (108;

25 September 1995

 

 

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