The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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Just as an experience is always an experience of--of something other than the experience itself-so a thought is always a thought about-about something other than the thought itself. In this sense, a thought is always about reality, in that it is always about something real independently of the thought itself. 

A thought about reality in this sense may be true or false, depending on whether or not the something thought about is as it is thought to be. Also, a thought about reality may be not merely true but necessarily true, provided that the something thought about could not conceivably be otherwise than it is thought to be-the proof of this being that the contradictory thought is also self-contradictory and therefore not merely false, but necessarily false. 

Among such thoughts about reality as are thus proved to be necessarily true are those expressed by the following three statements:

1. There is something real.

  1. There is something concretely real, and there is something abstractly reaL
  2. There is something divinely real, and there is something nondivinely real. 

Ad 1. The thought expressed by the first statement is not only true but necessarily true because the contradictory thought expressed by the statement, "There is nothing real," is also self-contradictory and therefore not merely false, but necessarily false. 

Ad 2. The thought expressed by the second statement is also necessarily true because the first statement, "There is something real," necessarily implies that the utterly abstract property of being something real that anything real must somehow instantiate also has to be real. Therefore, that there is something abstractly real is and must be as true as that there is something real, whether concretely or abstractly. But since everything is real for something, only nothing being real for nothing, anything real, either concretely or abstractly, is and must be real for something else that is also real in the same completely general sense. To be real, however, in the more specific sense of being something for which other things are and must be real _if they are anything at all, is to be not merely abstractly, but _concretely, real. Consequently, if "There is something real" expresses a thought that is necessarily true, the statement, "There is something concretely real," like the statement, "There is something abstractly real," expresses a thought that could only be true. 

The same conclusion follows from the principle-if you will, "the Aristotelian principle," or what Whitehead calls "the ontological principle"that anything abstractly real, like the utterly abstract property of being something real, can never be real simply in itself, but is always real only in that it is somehow instantiated in something concretely real. Thus, even as anything concretely real somehow instantiates and hence requires the utterly abstract properties of being real and of being concretely real, so these utterly abstract properties must be somehow instantiated in, and hence in turn require,some concretely real thing, although anything concretely real will do, no particular concrete reality being necessary. 

Ad 3. It will be clear from what has been said that to be something real in the sense in which anything real is so is to be real for something else that is real in the same completely general sense. Also clear is that to be something real in the more specific sense of concretely real is not only to be something that is real for something else but also something for which other things are real, just as to be, by contrast, something real in the more specific sense of abstractly real is to be real for something else without also being something for which other things are real. But now the question obviously raised by the thought expressed in the third statement is, What is it to be something divinely real, on the one hand, and something nondivinely real, on the other? _My contention is that the divine is to the nondivine as "all" is to "some." Insofar, then, as being something divinely real and being something nondivinely real are alike ways of being something not merely abstractly but concretely real, to be something divinely real is not only to be something that is real fornondivinely real is to be something that is real for only _some other things for which other things are real, i.e., for only some concretely real things, and also to be something for which only some other things are real, be they concretely or merely abstractly real themselves. all other things for which other things are real, i.e., for all concretely real things, but also to be something for which ~other things are real, be they concretely or merely abstractly real. By contrast, to be something But why is it necessarily true that there is something divinely real as well as something nondivinely real? If the divinely real is to the nondivinely real as "all" is to "some," we may say just as truly that they are to one another as whole is to part. But, then, just as there can be no whole without part(s), so there can be no part(s) without whole. Thus there cannot be anything divinely real unless there is something nondivinely real; and, conversely, there cannot be anything nondivinely real unless there is something divinely reaL This symmetry, however, is balanced by an asymmetry similar to that mentioned above (Ad 2). For while the nondivinely real and the divinely real necessarily require one another, the divinely real's requirement is satisfied simply by there being some nondivinely real thing(s), no particular nondivine thing(s) being required. On the contrary, there can be one, and only one thing, that satisfies the nondivinely real's requirement that there be something divinely real-namely, the one and only necessarily existent whole of reality, all of whose parts exist merely contingently even though it is not contingent but necessary that there be some such parts. Summer 1996; rev. 24 May 1999

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