The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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  1. If concretes (= instances = subjects), on the one hand, and abstracts (= properties = objects), on the other, are both real, "reality" is evidently an analogical, as distinct from a univocal, concept, in that it must be used in two different if also similar senses in order to refer to these two main types of reality. Allowing further, then, that there are also different types both of concretes (= instances = subjects)—namely, events, individuals, and aggregates-and of abstracts (= properties = objects)-namely, transcendentals, on the one hand, and categories, genera, species, and individualities, on the other—one has yet a further reason to say that "reality" is an analogical, not a univocal, term.

  2. Likewise, if the universal, nonfragmentary individual, on the one hand, and particular, fragmentary individuals, on the other, are both individuals, "individual," also, is evidently an analogical, not a univocal, term, in that it has two different senses when applied respectively to the one and only universal, nonfragmentary individual and to any of the many possible particular, fragmentary individuals. Furthermore, the term "event," apart from which "individual" cannot be defined, must also be an analogical, rather than a univocal, term, since it applies both to the type of events in which the universal, nonfragmentary individual is and must be somehow actualized and to the type of events in which any particular, fragmentary individual is and must be somehow actualized, if it exists at all.

  3. To this extent, or in this sense, then, there must be a place for analogy even in a strictly transcendental metaphysics. Even so, because the logical-ontological type-distinctions bridged by these analogical terms are themselves purely formal or literal, in that they are matters, not of degree but of all or none, the different senses in which these analogical terms are used are literal, in that they apply within the respective types, not in different senses, but in the same sense. Moreover, "reality," "individual," and "event" all have a strictly literal core of meaning in any of their uses. Anything that is real in any sense whatever is so only because it is real for, or makes a difference to, something else that is real in the same general sense. And any individual whatever, whether the universal, nonfragmentary individual or any particular, fragmentary individual, exists only insofar as it actualizes its individuality in events that are and must be contingent rather than necessary. This means, of course, that the sense in which analogy is indeed involved even in a strictly transcendental metaphysics has nothing to do with analogy in the sense in which Hartshorne and others seek to defend it in arguing for a categorial, specifically, psychicalist metaphysics.

  4. It would appear, then, that "analogy" itself, if not simply equivocal in meaning, is an analogical rather than a univocal term.

3 October 1985; rev. 12 April 1997; 1 August 2002

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