The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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Whereas the generalizations of science are mere hypotheses, to be indirectly verified, or falsified, by experience, the generalizations of metaphysics are hypothetical descriptions of the immediately given, which claim to make explicit what we all already believe and know, without definitely saying so to ourselves (cf. MVG: 152).

Experience is the source of meanings; and this means that the basic traits of experience must somehow correspond to the basic meanings, even as these must correspond to the basic structure of any world that can be meant (cf. RSP: 44).

Metaphysics is an attempt to describe the most general aspects of experience, to abstract from all that is special in our awareness and to offer tentative descriptions of the residuum-that residuum of experience which is left when all details variable in imagination have been set aside, which therefore survives the elimination of all detail (176 f.).

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