The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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Our ordinary experience has two principal dimensions: a vertical dimension (height, depth); and a horizontal dimension (length, breadth). One may also say, as I am wont to do, that it has two principal aspects: an existential aspect (aka its vertical dimension) and an empirical aspect (aka its horizontal dimension). 

Whereas science properly so-called and therefore the several special sciences are all oriented to the horizontal dimension, or the empirical aspect, of our experience, metaphysics is oriented to its vertical dimension, or its existential aspect. 

Metaphysics in the broad sense is the analysis of all the necessary conditions of the possibility of the vertical dimension, or the existential aspect, of our experience, and thus includes existentialist analysis (hence metaphysics in the broad sense), as well as metaphysics in the strict sense, i.e., ontology, (metaphysical) theology, and (metaphysical) cosmology. 

I note that in some of my writings, especially earlier ones, I seem to speak, not so much of different dimensions or aspects of experience as of different fields or modes. Thus, in formally defining "myth," I distinguish between "one basic mode of human experience," which I characterize as "our original, internal non-sensuous experience of ourselves, others, and the whole," and "the other basic mode of human experience, namely, our derived, external, sense experience of others and ourselves" ("Myth": 390). 

I also note the difference between saying that x is oriented to y, and that x is oriented by y. Although the sciences and metaphysics are oriented by pragmatic and existential questions respectively, they are also oriented to different dimensions or aspects of experience.

Summer 1996; rev. 25 January 2002

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