By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
"The concrete more" in concrete things from which the formulce of mathematical physics abstract is some form or other of the same principle of which human experience is the only form clearly given in our experience. The question, however, remains, and must remain, open whether, or to what extent, any of the other forms of the principle, to say nothing of the principle itself, can and should be described by the word "experience." Psychicalism, properly so-called, simply begs this question.
The only proper way to conceive "the concrete more" of beings other than ourselves-so far, at least,as metaphysics is concerned-is as exemplifying or instantiating the same purely formal structure of concreteness as such that is the necessary condition of the possibility of our own being as experiencing, indeed, knowing, willing, loving beings. Our being as such, as existing understandingly, and so emphatically, or to the second power, is given simply as a special case, example, or instance, however privileged, of this formal structure. Moreover, anything else that we could conceive as concrete could only be yet another special case, example, or instance of this structure. In this sense, we (nay agree with psychicalism that "the concrete more that the mathematics leaves out" is "neither mere matter, whatever that could be, nor our human experiences, but a vast variety of forms taken by a principle of which human experience is only one extremely special form" (Hartshorne).
The only proper way to conceive "the concrete more" of beings other than ourselves-so far, at least,as metaphysics is concerned-is as exemplifying or instantiating the same purely formal structure of concreteness as such that is the necessary condition of the possibility of our own being as experiencing, indeed, knowing, willing, loving beings. Our being as such, as existing understandingly, and so emphatically, or to the second power, is given simply as a special case, example, or instance, however privileged, of this formal structure. Moreover, anything else that we could conceive as concrete could only be yet another special case, example, or instance of this structure. In this sense, we (nay agree with psychicalism that "the concrete more that the mathematics leaves out" is "neither mere matter, whatever that could be, nor our human experiences, but a vast variety of forms taken by a principle of which human experience is only one extremely special form" (Hartshorne).
I take it that this position is, in all essentials, the position Hartshorne criticizes as the "nonpsychicalist" position held by Bertrand Russell as wen as Wilfrid Sellers (and before him his father, Roy Wood Sellers and his colleague, DeWitt Parker). Cf. ClAP: 240-244.
8 March 2006; rev. 16 October 2009
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