The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

SCANNED PDF

  1. Events occur, individuals exist, and properties are instantiated—namely, in events and/or individuals.

  2. An individual exists as soon and as long as the properties that individuate it are instantiated in some sequence of events. 

       3. Thus one may distinguish between the essence of an individual, meaning by that the properties that individuate it; the existence of an individual, meaning by that the instantiation of its individuating properties in some sequence of events; and the actuality of an individual, meaning by that the sequence of events in which the properties individuating it are instantiated.

        4. An individual is either universal or particular, depending on whether the individual properties that individuate it are or are not exclusively transcendental, and thus on whether it does or does not exist necessarily, in that its essence is or is not instantiated in a sequence of events that is unbegun and unending. 

        5. Just as individuals are either particular or universal, so the events in which they exist are either ordinary or extraordinary, depending upon whether their internal relations to all preceding events, ordinary and extraordinary, are partial and fragmentary or, rather, integral and complete.

        6. Any event, ordinary or extraordinary, is internally related to all preceding events, ordinary and extraordinary, and thus also to: (1) the restricted or differentiated possibility both of itself and of all contemporary and succeeding events, ordinary and extraordinary; (2) unrestricted or undifferentiated possibility; and (3) the transcendental structure of reality that is the least common denominator of unrestricted or undifferentiated possibility. Conversely, any event, ordinary or extraordinary, is externally related to all succeeding events, ordinary and extraordinary, as are also: (1) the restricted or differentiated possibility both of itself and of all contemporary and succeeding events, ordinary and extraordinary; (2) unrestricted or undifferentiated possibility; and (3) the transcendental structure of reality that is the least common denominator of unrestricted or undifferentiated possibility.   

         7. Whereas an ordinary event is internally related merely to something in all preceding events, ordinary and extraordinary, an extraordinary event is internally related to everything in all of them, there being nothing in them to which it is not internally related. 

re. 25 March 2001; 14 September 2005

  • No labels