The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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In some of my formulations of what is properly meant by "ultimate reality" along the lines of James's statement that "reality" means "what we in some way find ourselves obliged to take account of," I have not said what I should have because it is not what I meant. Thus, for example, in DTT: 144, I say that "strictly ultimate reality is what not only we, but any being that is so much as possible, is obliged somehow to take account of, if only in the completely general sense of being really, internally related to it and therefore dependent on it and affected by it." The essential qualification suppressed by my use, simply, of "being" is that the only being I meant (or possibly could have meant in order to tell the truth) was "concrete singular being," rather than any being that is merely abstract or, if concrete, nonsingular, a mere aggregate. Therefore, the term called for, instead of "being," was either "event," "individual," or "event or individual." 

As for James's idiomatic expression, "to take account of," it seems to me to mean, in its completely general sense, just what I say it does, "to be really, internally related to, dependent on, and affected by." But, of course, the properties/relations thereby implied can be meaningfully predicated only of "subjects," or "concretes (concreta)," not of "objects," or "abstracts (abstracta)."

The other idiom that I take to correspond to "to take account of" and to be similarly useful, if not also all but indispensable, is "to make a difference to." In its completely general sense, I understand it to mean, "to be merely verbally, externally related to, independent of, and affecting (or effecting)." The properties/relations that this implies can be meaningfully predicated only of "objects," or "abstracts, "not of "subjects," or "concretes," although, of course, any "subject," or "concrete," must itself be an "object," and insofar an "abstract," in some relationships—namely, all in which it makes a difference to another subject that takes account of it. 

23 July 2005

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