The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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Significantly, the only logical-ontological type distinction I make with respect to ordinary individuals is between (1) ordinary individuals as such; and (2) ordinary individuals that are also understanding, i.e., "existents" in the emphatic sense of the word.

This is clearly closely connected with the fact that, for a long time, I have also distinguished between (1) metaphysics in a strict sense; and (2) metaphysics in a broad sense—the first being concerned exclusively with ordinary individuals as such (as well as, of course, with the extraordinary individual), the second being concerned, in addition, with specifically understanding individuals, or "existents" in the emphatic sense. 

But there is yet a third similarly connected point—namely, the distinction I've also made in places with respect to being obliged to take account of ultimate reality. Here I've distinguished between (1) being obliged to take account of it, "if only in the completely general sense of being really, internally related to it and therefore dependent on it and affected by it" (I might very well have said, in place of "affected by it," "in a suitably qualified sense, determined by it."); and (2) being obliged to take account of it "not only by being internally related to it, and so dependent on it and affected by it, but also by somehow understanding it" (cf. DTT: 143 f.).

21 July 2005

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