1517. Hartshorne says, "Universals must have . . .

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Hartshorne says, "Universals must have some embodiment (if in nothing else, in some mind thinking them)" (AD: 56 ff.). But what, exactly, does he mean by "some mind thinking them"? I take him to mean, whatever else he means, God's mind—understood as that mind, thanks to which alone possibility as well as actuality has, as he would say, an "objective or extralinguistic" reality.

But, then, if I reject, as I do, the idea of "God's mind" as having any but a symbolic, nonliteral meaning (if it is to have any clear and coherent meaning at all), how do I account for the "some embodiment" that—on an Aristotelian-Whiteheadian-Hartshornean understanding of the "ontological principle"—universals have to have') 

I account for it by thinking and speaking, not of "God's mind," except as a symbolic, nonliteral concept and term, but of the universal individual's unqualfied inclusion (of all modes of reality—possibility (both ontological and ontic) as well as actuality Hartshorne himself says that "all-inclusiveness, non-duality, is a formal character of deity," which, as such, can be stated formally and, therefore, literally, by saying "God is coincident with all truth and reality" ("The Idea of God": 5). But, then, while one certainly may interpret such literal modal coincidence by means of the psychicalist concept, "God's mind," there is just as certainly no reason why one must so interpret it, since the purely formal, literal statement that the universal individual is all-inclusive suffices to make the point—at least so far as metaphysics is concerned. 

To be embodied is to be included—being instantiated as actuality being one mode of embodiment or inclusion, being entertained as possibility being the other (cf Notebooks, 16 November 1993). 

9 June 2008 

I suspect that heretofore I have tended to use the terms "to instantiate" and "to embody" interchangeably. But there is a good reason not to use them in this way.

Abstracts, according to the Aristotelian understanding of them, require to be embodied in some concrete(s). But this requirement can be satisfied if the abstract in question is at least conceived or entertained as a possibility, even though it is not actualized. Thus if someone at least conceives the possibility of a definitive cure for AIDS, the Aristotelian requirement is satisfied, even though no such cure has actually been found.

It clearly seems important to take account of this Aristotelian understanding in any treatment of abstracts. But in a strictly formal or transcendental metaphysics it will not do to say with Hartshorne and other idealists that the Aristotelian requirement can be met, provided only that the abstract in question is conceived by some mind, and that it in fact is met because every abstract is conceived, at least implicitly, by the divine mind.

What can be said, then? One suggestion is to say that an abstract's being instantiated is not the only way, but one of two ways, in which it may be embodied. It may also be embodied by being included-included as a possibility for instantiation, as distinct from being instantiated. Some such distinction must be made in any event, since any concrete is internally related not only to its past but also to its future-to possibility as well as actualityand yet the internal relatedness in the two cases is different. 

One way of making the distinction, then, is to say that an abstract must indeed be somehow embodied in a concrete, but that it is so embodied either by being instantiated in the concrete as actuality or included in it as possibility. Alternatively, one could allow that "included" is like "embodied," in that instantiating an abstract is also a way of including it, and say, instead, that an abstract is embodied!included in a concrete provided that it is either instantiated in it as actuality or entertained in it as possibility.

16 November 1993