The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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  1. Rule: The more abstract something is, the less it derives its character from other things and the more other things derive their character from it. Conversely, the more concrete something is, the more it derives its character from other things and the less other things derive their character from it.
  2. There are two different levels of abstractness—individualities, species, genera, and categories being on the one level, transcendentals, on the other. The difference between the two levels—ontic and ontological—is that in the case of ontic abstracts there is always the possibility of negative instances, whereas in the case of ontological abstracts there is no such possibility because they admit of positive instances only. Otherwise put, the intensional classes (of events, individuals, or other more specific kinds) that all ontic abstracts imply by a generic or indefinite necessity are only contingently nonempty, whereas the intensional classes that ontological abstracts imply by the same kind of generic or indefinite necessity are necessarily nonempty. On the Aristotelian view of universals or forms, abstracts at both levels must be somehow instantiated (if in nothing else, then in some mind thinking them). This means that some abstracts must be instantiated, since otherwise there would be nothing to talk about, whether universal or particular. But, then, the ground of contingency is not in the contrast between being an abstract and being instantiated, but in the contrast between being more and being less abstract. All ontic abstracts are more or less contingent, although categories are relatively less so than genera, genera, relatively less so than species, and species, relatively less so than individualities. On the other hand, all ontological abstracts are necessary in that they are and must be somehow instantiated. 
  3. States" is not a proper synonym for "events" simpliciter. The two terms are synonymous only insofar as the events in question are also the states of some at least potentially enduring individual. Since there appears to be no metaphysical reason why all events have to be such states, the two terms are not synonymous, and "events" is the preferable term to use to designate the only fully concrete reality. 

Rev. 13 April 1997—

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