Ideas About Dewey

7/30/2019 Ideas About Dewey

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Ecstatic Time and Individual Existence: On Deweys Naturalized Metaphysics / Ontography

It is note worthy that existence is not a generic trait, but is begged at the outset. Given that there is

existence, there will be manifest some traits.

A moral of Deweys is that one doesnt know what will happen until after it does. Decision cuts off a

intelligent deliberation pre-maturely and takes action. The religious experience is one of being not self-grounding, related to another and related to mystery. It is a mystery that an individual is so, and the

same goes for me.

With some patience for neologism, we may call Deweys metaphysics an ontograph, a beautiful work

of the art of ontography. A few pages in the last chapter of Experience and Nature attempted to state a

view upon which the words metaphysics and metaphysicalwould make sense on experientialgrounds,instead of upon the ground of ultimate Being behind experience serving as its underpinning . . . the

sense and point of recognition of generic traits lies in their application in the conduct of life. (LW

16:388f) (cf LW 1:308-310 Dewey emphatically sez that detecting general traits (which experience is

such as to enable us to arrive at their identification in a circular sort of way) is not self-sufficient, buthelpful for value-securing. The sense and point of recognition of generic traits lies in their application

in the conduct of life: that is, in theirmoralbearing provided moralbe taken in its basic broad human

sense. His point of view is what must first be got, and his writings, so far as my experience with themhas revealed, are expressions of what the world looks like to him, writings from the point of view

expressed in the continuity of experience and nature (Nature in Exp, Bernstein 251). When I see a

photograph, I get a glimpse of what it is like to see the way the photographer did.

The metaphysics as a map must not self-referentially include its mapings in the map, but denotatively

announce its methodology as a map discovered in experience (no to self-referencing LW 12:361,

methodology of experience in the 1st introduction to Exp & Natu). (Cf. The Norse parable in Exp &Nature combined with "Knowledge as a work of art confers upon things traits and potentialities

which did not previously belong to them "(LW 1: 285) ) Any other way, and it wouldnt be denotative.

Not only is the map done in the spirit of denotation, where the Secondary Experience which makes useof these objects of reflection can return to Primary Experience and the stuff of primary experience is

enriched by the method (LW 1:16), but thatthere is a metaphysics is part of the denotation the

Methodology section of that scientific report, Exp & Nat, says: I am approaching experience with ametaphysics. The report on metaphysics by Dewey sez, here is a metaphysics, it is listed as traits to

be found manifested by existences of all kinds. It isnt just a list of traits, its a method. Much as the

awareness of art can give the idea of art, it is important that we embrace thatthis is a metaphysics. Wemust dwell on the significance of the point of view which perceives fundamentality at every turn. The

genius of Deweys metaphysics is that it is natural it grows and develops, it is experienced and

informs further expriencing (knowledge modifies the tie Exp & Nature). The content of the list of

proposed generic traits is less significant than the form namely, that he has seen the worldmetaphysically. Form is a dynamic organizational principle (art as experience somewhere). What

would the form of naturalized metaphysics be, if the content is the list of traits? I can think of no

other way to avoid reductionism than to be democratic in this way. Every kind of existence by right isan equal carrier of certain traits, and by virtue of these their individuality is each their irreplaceably

own. (In an early sentence about wisdom and the generic traits in Exp & Nat, Dewey sez the upshot is

that existences have an equal footing with each other). Boisvert at least mis-characterizes the spirit ofDeweys efforts by, it appears to me, remaining unaware of the significance attached to a metaphysics

having to do with manifest traits that are found anywhere there is a there. No thingis really real early

in the article Boisvert sez that Deweys metaphysics is inclusive, and then he is worried that the otiose


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list of traits couldnt cut the mustard. That formulation, though, that there are generic traits is the most

inclusive type of metaphysics there is.

An approach to metaphysics as if it were a work of art Dewey revolutionizes the idea of metaphysicsby inverting its function. To engage the world metaphysically is to see it as radically non-foundational,

ie, the root of anything is not a foundation. Dewey got rid of the turtle supporting the world with a

metaphysics. Who would have thought? Everywhere a Deweyan metaphysician turns, there is theexperience of nature; the lover of wisdom is finally liberated to respect everything and see with

Anaximander the traits of all in all.

There are not things that arent experienced and then become experienced. Rather, they are becoming

experienced ("the earlier reality is at any and every point on its way to experience. It is only the earlier

portion, historically speaking, of what is later experience"{MW3:102). Furthermore, this characteristicof continuity change of reality (as ODwyer might mistakenly refer to it) in the direction of experience

is "only apprehended in or realized in experience"{MW3:103).). A dilemma between a metaphysics of

existence and a metaphysics of experience is only sustained by a rigid belief in the separation of

existence and experience. If something is potentially within the ambit of experience, then by LogicTOI it is existentially involved (definition of potentiality). Why is there such a concern to make

assertions about unexperienced subject-matter, when the only way to verify such claims is to have a

direct experience of the very subject-matter? But this does not mean that there isnt an in-itself :qualitative isness is precisely this in-itself. The importance of a respect for experience is that assertions

are limited to the empirical, and that the empirical is the in-itself. No one knows the in-itself, but

everyone experiences it. ( LW 14:112 the occurrence of events are explained, but not the thing initselfthe thing itself. It is a mystery that an existence is just what it is, and recognition of this mystery

implies a respect for the existence. Intelligence is critical for Deweys philosophy, but it can not

replace the presence of existence from which thought emerges as a tool of redisposition.) Dewey is not

an idealist, even though the limits of experience are the limits of his world, because experience is of apresence that is, in a way, beyond experience so as to be real (Schelling sez the positive philosophy

looks for what is beyond or above experience). (there is a basis beyond all ideas in train that underlies

and gives them unity in train Qualitative Thought 194 bernstein) Experience is in nature, not of ideas.The story goes that Kant reconciled the empiricists and the rationalists Dewey has succeeded with

a similar adjustment between idealists and materialists. (Contextis present (Context & Thought 90,

Bernstein ed))

Boisverts article at p 158 introduces the philosophical fallacy, and applies it to the theory of sense-

data. They are not antecedent, isolated building blocks of existence. But in the context in whichthey are, for aught I know could be the case in a digital eye-implant, they are building blocks. This

statement, however, is only true in the case that it is; the categorial nature of such an assertion is

flagrantly non-Deweyan. Sense-data, brain states, these are all real, they all exist, but only in bounded

ways. Perhaps it is warranted to say that a brain state doesnt exist if it must meet the condition asbeing the cause of conscioussness of qualities, though a brain state specified as to be a condition of

such consciousness exists. (Building blocks is an ambiguous metaphor for Sagrada Familia is not

merely building blocks, but the blocks that compose it have, in their own histories, been isolated toeach other prior to their interaction.) Certainly, they are not what they are purported to be in my

observation of a cat on a mat, but a result from an abstractive process undertaken within a particular

inquiry is, in many cases, quite lauded by Dewey as an intelligent conclusion, which then can be andshould be the antecedent conditions for further constructions, say, a theory of them. In the reply to

Nagel about Logic & Existence, Dewey sez that logical constructions exist, truistically in fact.


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What in the world do these writers think Dewey believed about the status of things prior to experience?

Are they actually concerned to show that, with a little a charitable exegesis, Dewey didnt in fact

exclude things unexperienced from the realm of what-is? Why are people so concered about

vouchsafing some permanence to unexperienced things especially when they cant even say whichthings they are trying to vouchsafe. Its fine to think of nature as unexhausted, but that doesnt mean

that simple discovery of what was all along there is sufficient. The point of the Norse parable in Exp

& Nat is that discovery varies in significance with the significance acquired by what exists. Existencehappens in different ways, and I cant understand the concern with whether Dewey did have a

metaphysics of existence (or that he couldnt!) as other than committed to some idea of substantial

permanence for things (he does not believe in substance, which is why he does not call himself amaterialist LW 14:86 Experience, Knowledge, Value: A Rejoinder). All their arguments have to do

with existences and events in general where the lesson of Deweys adverbial-adjective-noun

mantra is that things exist, particular things. Why make claims about existence as such? Thats whyDewey only speaks about the traits manifest by existence of all kinds empirically observed so far by us

(although, in the reply to Nagel, he seems to say that the traits exist) Things exist antecedent to their

being objects of knowing, but what is the point of saying they exist prior to or outside of experience?

There is no meaning to they anymore, and the speculation spins off into dialectical senselessness.After quoting a statement of mine that only the conclusion of reflective inquiry is known Mr.

Woodbridge goes on to say, I conceive the object to exist prior to its being known. I, too, conceive

that things had in direct experience exist prior to being known (LW 5:211 Reply to Some Criticisms)This is a delightful and apt illustration of what Dewey means by existence. Existence, like any noun, is

the function of some thing, some thing that is existing. The presence of existence in its immediacy is

there in experience had. Note the careful way that Dewey avoids speaking with the abstractive style ofWoodbridge when he claims that things had, determinate things, are the things that exist. Woodbridge

predicates existence to objects irrespective to how these objects are countenanced.

Do existences exist? This is a delicate question, and the exploration of it requires a sensitivity towardthe meaning of the infinitive word to exist, with hope that the infinitive is more basic in some way

than any of its other conjugations, though I suspect that 3 rd person singular is the original way of

experiencing, as does Dewey with his priveleging of isness to immediate presence. If, in an article onDeweys metaphysics (of existence by ODwyer), a conclusion is reached that events can pre-exist

experience, then what is actually said? First off, thepossibility for events pre-existing experience is

only a possibility gathered together and presented by thought. Possibilities are objects of inquiry, notontological powers (LW 12:110-13). Second, what is it to exist if that attribute can just be predicated

to a subject-matter (viz, event). Has anything with any consequence been said when a conclusion is

put down events can pre-exist the experience of them. The fact is, the historical phase of the eventprior to its own having been experienced is explicitly allowed by Dewey, since part of the events career

is in the experiencing. It is as becoming experienced. I can only think ODwyer could be making a

point if he wants to say events pre-exist (what does that mean? Pre-exist?) prior to experience, but

they might not ever be experienced what sort of events could these be? The artificiality of such talkas this offends me. To exist is a function ofactually existing, and of existence nothing can be said.

When things existthey are functionally a presence of isness. If one is going to use the word existence

to denote solidity in time-space, fine, but that is a relational term that relates to non-existence andthen has nothing to say about the most important part of what is usually meant by exist, the isness.

This is the existence that things come into. You want to infer that events exist apart experience?

What do you mean? That they are somewhere an experiencer can go? Then what are they, anyway?Which event is it that youre talking about, the one that pre-existed experience? Oh, youre just

concerned about events in general. Is that it? In a way, Deweys own brand of realism demands that

we do not make claims about something like existence apart from experience, because the reality of


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experience admits to exception.

(((If existence functions as qualitative isness, if thats what existence does, and all qualities are neitherin the organism nor the environment (get quote, Qualitative Thought? but in Exp & Nat the qualities

were never in the organism and Logic: TOI 68), and yet the interaction whereby quality coalesces

does not justpop into existence (ie, an event does not become but is already becoming (Events andthe Future)), then existence is contextual that is, only an interaction of selective behavior births

existence as actively existing. Now, if quality is not felt by the inorganic, the force of the argument still

remains whatever thing an electron is to us exists in a way for what is in interaction with, it existsfor,it is what it is because it selectively behaves in the face of an environment that, in its turn, is composed

of selectively behaving entities. This all sounds suspiciously like there is a Being to the electron

constitutive of its proper in-itself, but that is to humiliate human experiencers in favor of, say, protons.If one attempts to know what an electron is like, an advantageous avenue leads one to ask what it like

to be a proton. The reverie employed in every scientific discovery must, if there is be genuine

objective novelty, assume a novel context. I digress. Point being, there is no absolute in-itselfto the

electron, which is to say there are many in-themselves of each interaction with the thing (or entity,though Dewey preferred thing) we denote as electron.)))

Next, Boisvert goes on to quote a paradigmatic facet of the Deweyan perspective: [Reality]designates indifferently everything that happens . . . The only way in which the term reality can ever

become more than a blanket denotative term is through recourse to specific events in all their diversity

and thatness (MW 10:39). Reality is more than a double-barrelled word (Nature in Experience, 258Bernstein ed.), because it isfunctionalandgenetic. Dewey explains clear as a clarion that real is a

denotative term, context-sensitive, and can change hands from thing to thing in the course of life and

inquiry, but is basically indifferent (1st Introduction to Exp & Nat). Then, it seems that Boisvert

disregards his own advice by asserting that Dewey wants his metaphysics to not be strictly egalitarian,that is, one in which everything is real in the same sense and to the same degree (Hickmans Book

159). Metaphysics simply does not have anything to do with ascription of real or finding what is real.

Cunninghams list of 40 traits does not list it. If only the most real existences manifest generic traits,then wed assume that reality should be included on the list, unless reality is so perfectly coextensive

with existence in general that it would be trivial to list but in that case, how could there one existence

more real than the next?

The list of Deweys is not about thingsbut about traits. His metaphysics does not inquire into

existentiality, into isness, not into existence, but is a study of traits that are found. It does not mentionwhat is real, because it does not postulate what exists, only how that which exists manifests itself. The

problem with asserting that Dewey chose a protypically real is that then he, too, would have

committed the philosophical fallacy. To assert that the social exists is to take an abstractive concept and

to say its real. Perhaps Deweys steps in this prototype direction are not as well formulated as wemight like because even after the Inclusive Philosophic Idea he was still describing his metaphysics as

a listing of traits manifest by existences of all kinds.

In quick succession, Boisvert declars Dewey wanted a perspective for grasping certain dimensions of

the real (159). Existence changes, the real changes, a search for adequacy is too similar to a quest for

certainty. When something is real, it really is what it is. Remember that Qualitative Thought hadsomething to say about the copula and the predicate.

Anyway, if existence is not grasped or conceptualized, what is the significance of such humility?


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Everything has isness a neither predictable nor predicable thatness.

I am worried about Boisverts ascription that whatever is real in the fullest sense is in interaction,

when he next goes on to say that something not in interaction has no existence I gather that he issaying that a dicriminatory take on an existence that isolates its interacting character is truncated, and

has sundered a fuller reality from its rightful originality. I admit I do not understand the relation

between existence and reality, since only the fully real exists, what would be the existential status ofanything less real?

The hitch has to do with event and thus existence. Dewey amplified his claims many times that anevent only is in interaction with human behavior, and apart from that nothing. The question to pose is:

isnt everything that exists just what it is? And if a thing isnt whatit is, is it at all? consider the

broken hammer, itis a hammer, that happens to be presently broken, so it isnt what it is an actual way,but potentially it is a functioning hammer. Inquiry states a problem, and now that problem is brought

into actuality the hammer is broken. That is a success, and next the inquirer can set himself to fixing

the hammer. (In the article on Peirces theory of quality Dewey sez that actuality in the literal sense

defines existence, and that quality is potential. We can work with this. Quality is not anything actual,but it is a dominating presence, it no thing, but still determines what will be a thing Dewey calls it a

basis or ground (Qualitative Thought). However, potentiality hasnt been actualized until it has, which

is to say it is not exerting an actual effect or holding sway until it is called out. Potentiality aspotentiality is after the fact of its provisional determination of what is objectively actual. Time and

Individuality makes the point that if genuine time is to be real, then potentialities are only actualized

(are determinately a potentialforsome activity, which results in that activity being apossibility).Anyway what is all this talk about hammers for? The qualitative individuality of a person is there,

sure, but a tendency is to infer that the persons activity is individualized to the last degree, locatable in

an isolated entity. Though a person has individuality, that individuality is not anything, is not actual,

until it is takes material and informs it until the qualitative individuality transforms into thecommunicating world. The temptation, the philosophers fallacy, is to ascribe antecedent existence

which is, effectively, ascribepermanentexistence. Instead, to see in new discoveries a growth of what

came before is to finally see the truth in beauty of emergentism. To discover existence does not allowascribing antecedent existence to that which exists that would breach the first postulate of nave

empiricism. Why is Carnap wrong? Because what is had is already had, and not able to be proven

with certainty. A things existence depends on prior conditions if Deweys clear and distinctinsistence on context were acknowledged and then, whats more important, applied to passages in his

writings that are cited and thereby uprooted from their own proper context, there would be no ground

for debate as to whether he was a foundationalist or its opposite. Things have foundations, and whatfunds a thing is in its a turn a thing, too. Fruit has its roots which are not the direct roots of many other

fruit, but the roots themselves depend on their own environment in order to actively root, that is, bear

fruit.

If I may be forgiven a barbarism of language for the sake of generality of explication, in the immediate

presence of a qualitative situation there is an original unity of the situations whatness and thatness;

what it is and that it is are only each separable moments in thought, not in existence. That noexistential operation can remove the whatness from a thing without thereby cancelling that the thing

exists is so obvious that any argument in its support inexorably (to my perspective) spins a circle in the

dialectically absurd. Additionally, and more presumptively, every individual is only what it is. Thisrestriction to a unity is a way of expressing that an individual is immediately itself, an undivided whole,

but not for that reason simple or without complexity. An individual is not atomic; it can be analyzed,

unpacked, enriched, and interpreted as the case may be, but in any event it is itself as a whole and each


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distinguished part is only ever a part of that whole. Any individuals whatness is specifically what that

individual is (MW 10:39); for if it happened to be the whatness of a plurality of individuals that are,

then, since every individual is only what it is, the whatness of a plurality of individuals is not the

specific whatness of any of members of the plurality,but . . . From the second point it follows that,since all whatness is originally and existentially attached to an individual thatness, if the whatness is to

be abstracted from the concrete individual so that it may move about untethered to its existential

homeland, it must have a different and distinct thatness apart from the individual it was taken from arequirement that amounts to this abstracted whatness being an existentially different thing than that

from which it emerged. I have kept abstraction in scare quotes because it does evoke the character of

the existential operation under question, though with unwanted connotations. Whatness and thethatness belong together in their original wholeness. They belong together so thoroughly that any

manner of taking the whatness, holding it apart in thought, such that it appears as an isolated entity,

essence, or idea is only done under pain of losing touch with its proper individual existentiality. Theprocess does not produce a distilled abstract which pretends to carry within a relatively diminished

form the meaning of the whole in germ, neither is a whatness extracted from the very resources of the

thing under question, for this act of plunder would alter the very existential subject-matter by

effectively breaking it apart. The existential operation is more like a measurement with an availabletool (get quote), or a charcoal rubbing off an engraved stone. If an archaeologist makes a rubbing, no

one would mistake the smudged paper for the carved stone, but this feature of common sense doesnt

preclude an identification of the content of the ancient engraving to the charcoal on the crisp butcherpaper. If there is to be that identity, it is made in turn through another existent medium; in this case a

language interacts with the charcoal marks and registers words that impress themselves upon the

enormous wax tablet of cultural memory. In all of these cases, a previously existent resource at hand isput to use to take on the whatness of some other thing . . (Art as Experience 60). Maybe the rubbing is

all the archaeologists needs for his purposes. The point of all this is that not only does he not leave for

home without the stone in his pocket, but he doesnt even carry a part. The new whatness exists , but

part of its nature is that it is as separated from its original and aknowledgement of this fact isparamount That is to say universals taken by themselves . . . express dialectic intent, not any matter

of fact existence (Exp & Nat). These two points, no whatness without thatness, no thatness without

whatness come together in the formula: nothing exists without being what it is. This statement appearsneedless, trivial, or empty. However, the necessary involvement of the notion of existence with that of

whatexists is a critical step toward Deweys point of view on nature. Science can grasp what it thinks

a thing is, and can do so skillfully, but logically formulated material is no substitute for the having ofindividual experience (MW 2:284)

All of this is to say that a word, a name, an idea, all exist in their own right, but that is just the

point an logical formula is not the existent situation from which it emerged, and it would befallacious to say it is the prior conditions for its own existence. All existences are something more

than products; they have qualities of their own and assert independent life.

Dewey has made this point in many places in many ways, and one representative explication is the

distinction between immanent meanings and referential meanings. When a storm batters a sailboatso as to rip out a section of grommets from the sail, the sailor who is well accustomed to this sort of

experience interacts with the behavior of the boat in such a habituated way that the present flapping

sound of the damaged sail is the existence of broken grommets. In its developing interaction with thesailor it is more than that, too. It is also a comprehended problem, a peril, and a cause for swift action

considering the contextual severity of the storm. What I have called the whatness (a loose sail in a

storm) and the thatness (that this is present) hang together so that a reflective separation of one from


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the other is logically valid. In Deweys example, a landlubber is not experienced in a way that would

present what that flapping sound is in the same manner as the flapping sound is given for the sailors

present experience. To the landlubber the connection of the sound with torn grommets is not immanent

but an eventual outcome of a course of inquiry that concludes with a reference from the sound to itssource. Though a reference is the sighted goal, the landlubber must have a handle on a given to get

there. Some events are clothed with meaning on their own behalf (LW 3:87) which in this case is

the immanently meaning that is the sound of a sail flapping. . (Everything that is somethingwithout actually being it must by nature seek itself) When Boisvert says quite accurately that events

are heterogeneous and temporal, this is however not an ontological claim about reality. They have

heterogeneity and temporality, which is to say that in interaction with human behavior these qualitiesare made manifest by the action of the copula, but such terms as heterogeneity and temporality means

they, if anything is to be said of them in themselves or berhaupt, are indefinable. Heterogeneity and

temporality are not conditions for definition, but the opposite, growth and novelty. Every naming ishypothetical, always qualified as only standingfor the time being. Boisvert finds the irreducibility of

isness (Lw1:75) to be a condition of definition, where it is just the opposite. It is the demand for

respect of ineffability. Doesnt Knowing & the Known speak against definition as a practice?

Specification, characterization. Boisvert also says that duration in time is inseparable from the eventsdefinition a definition is rigid and logical; duration is necessary ifthe event is to manifest itself

according to an operational definition.

Deweys metaphysics says nothing about existence, but about what is manifest in an interaction with

humans. When he says existence is precarious, or it is stable, this use of is is not an equal sign. These

are all traits, all manifestations. Interactions.

(like cartography or photography one takes a photograph tosee what the world looks like in

photographs, to frame it a certain way so as to see it through the frame. The photograph as an art

selects features that are there and arranges them. By doing this, a good photograph (or at leasteffective) can show others how to look at things. It can also show others how to take a photograph! A

good map can help orient ourselves in the world, and when we put it to use, check it against the facts, it

can also show us what a good (or bad) map is like. That feature, showing what a good map is like, isnot the intention of the pure map maker, and would be the intention of one who maps the map, so to

speak, ie who charts the parts of the map that work well. Why would we be interested in defending or

denying the validity of his metaphysics why would someone seek out a map and worry whether ornot it is a good one for the job? What is the difference between a drawing that shows how to draw and

a drawing that tells how to draw? The former is evocative, the latter is involuted and invocative. With

the latter, the lesson ends, but with the former, the showing, one can return again and again and find

genuinely new wisdom. Deweys denotative method is the telling, his metaphysics the showing. If one

tries to ascertain why it is a good map, we check what it purports to do and how well it does it. Why is

Deweys metaphysics a good one? If it is a work of art, it is what is does with and in human experience

(Art as Expe 3)) Much as the idea of art is the greatest intellectual achievement in the history ofhumanity, Deweys metaphysics is put together artfully so that it may reveal the idea of metaphysics

the idea of finding continuity, of respecting existence (in the First Introduction to Exp & Nat, near the

end, Dewey sez that respect for experience is the first precondition (as if he couldnt emphasize itmore!) for goodwill in humanity.) Deweys metaphysics strives to make good on the importance of

being sufficiently bold (Philosophy and Civilization) -- there must be faith in ideals, that is to say, in

the absence of making them real.

Dewey is not an idealist in fact, if the word has become public domain, it might be time to call

Dewey an existentialist. For example, the process of inquiry is itself a controlled transformation of a


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situation, in which some problem has arisen and is therefore unsettled (or, more likely, the other way

round), into one in which the problem has been resolved. But this transformation is existential, not

just mental or psychological. For an inquiry is not completed until the hypothesis about how the

problem might be solved has been tested; and the operations involved in such testing are physical onesthat alter the constituents of the initially unsettled situation. (this is Nagels intro at LW 12:xxi, he

refers to LW 12:121f, Dewey also explicitly emphasizes the trans in transform in his own intorductory

remarks to Logic TOI) Existency is not a real predicate, which is to say that thought may produce aconclusion but requires testing to be conclusive. Speculation issynthetic (Exp & Nat), analysis

cannot be trusted no matter how carefully it is followed, subreptions are part of the process anyway,

ideas must be tested if for no other justification than that the existence under question will appeardifferent once it is approached from the newly fabricated point-of-view. The full and eventual reality

of knowledge is carried in the individual case, not in general laws isolated from use in giving an

individual case its meaning (LW 4:166, Quest for Cert 208) The individual case, the individualexistence, is set in contrast to what knowledge has for its objects the individual cannot be known

through and through, so as to dissolve in an alembic, but it is used as the test-subject.

We could say that an existence having isness means that it has radical heterogeneity (LW 2:64). Whenit is taken, ordered, in thought as a thing, it is abstracted to a homogeneous identity. Heterogeneity is

a testament to the indefinite and interminable fecundity of any natural existence. I can find no other

way of understanding how possibilities are called out as if they had antecendent existence unless thereis heterogeneity in the every existence. (LW 14:112 the occurrence of events are explained, but not

the thing in itselfthe thing itself. It is a mystery that an existence is just what it is, and recognition of

this mystery implies a respect for the existence. Intelligence is critical for Deweys philosophy, but itcan not replace the presence of existence from which thought emerges as a tool of redisposition.)

Why is heterogeneity imporant? Why is individual existence important? These are required

convictions for the respect of experience. (The significance of experience for philosophic method isafter all, but the acknowledgment of the indispensability of context in thinking when that recognition is

carried to its full term (Context & Thought 108 Bernstein ed.).) There is novelty, there is achievement.

And whats more, that novelty is localized to each history. The novelty is just as real, just as genuine,no matter how formally similar instances of it one may have observed. A belief in homogeneity

reduces an existence to a one-to-one function, where if you know what goes in, and you know the

unitary operation the existence effects, then you know what youll get. It is practical within bounds tohave such trust in existence that one can set her watch by, but when a habitual attribution of

homogeneity transgresses its reasonable limits, so does the one who holds the habit. When a child

learns to speak, it is a real discovery on the childs part, worthy of the greatest approbation, no matterhow many children have made a similar discovery before. The heterogeneity in the childs existence

eliminates any crutch of necessity we may ascribe or at least makes us respectthe genuine novelty. It

would be a shameful act of impiety toward experience to ignore the genuine and generative

achievement of the child. It is natural in a eulogistic sense, birthing the new, not in the idiomatic sense(which should be stamped out) of only natural (closely allied to only a matter of time it is

difficult to underestimate the effect to weal or woe done by little folk sayings such as these.)

We are in nature, in interaction, not an any way marbles are in a box, which is a relational in. We must

perceive the means as means which means we pereive the consequence as the consequence of means

(Nature in Experience has a footnote).

If something is new, it didnt exist. If it has not already existed, it must have become. As experienced


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things become

(there is a bit of irony in the concatenation: naturalistic metaphysics. Nature after nature, depart for a

moment from physics, and return. As if he wants to bring metaphysics back to solid earth (of the earthearthy LW 16:115n7). (Context is another term for the immanent presence of a situation any thought

formed is bound to its context, and application beyond the limits of the context is not a priori assured,

to immanent presence it must return, though, of course, with a difference. Thought must be firmlyrooted always in context)

Deweys Positive Philosophy sez we must want our object, imaginatively seek it. It is free to construct

its own object, and thus does not need to rest wholly upon a foundation. It provides itself with its ownbeginning. An immediate quality is an actuality before possibility; there is no sense in reasoning up

to the oncoming existence of a quality, for it is unique and unpredictable just as much as it is

unpredicable of a thought-through causal chain; a quality cannot be a possibility, for a quality is alwaysone of a kind; but it gives a sense for possibility..

Metaphyiscs are to be tested the Subject Matter of Metaphysical Inquiry ends with a boon of

metaphysical study (everything is growing, there is always a temporal quality), while Deweys reply toNagel in the Excluded Middle exchange implies that generic traits are definers of operations that are

practically brought to bear on existence.

With the idea of a possibility-tree goes that of necessity or cause. They are basically correlates

and both problematic for conducting life (the belief in possibility has so much to do with the everyday

experience ofoption, eg items on a menu, poker hands, that possibilities are thought to be pent-up inwhats just there. They can be taken advantage of or not (eg in poker), and are basically independent

subsistences in the world. Dewey is not pleonastic when he sez we create new futures.) There is no

sense to possibility without the corollary. Without stretches of necessity, or at least necessity hemming

in what is possible, there would be no determinateness to choices. Dewey did much to undermine thisnotion of cause. It isnt a generic trait. A belief that there are possibilities border by impossibilities is

an instance of the philosophers fallacy isnt it? I find the possibilities through inquiry, they are

worked for and disclosed as conclusions to my search, and then if I were to assert that they were therein the past, this is turning what is strictly logical into something ontological. An object of knowledge

found at the conclusion of ordered inquiry should not be treated as if it existedall along it exists now,

sure, but this existence is different than the immediate presence of being preceding the distillation ofthis particular existent possibility. If the philosophic fallacy is to be avoided, the realm of existents

must be carefully circumscribed by what is manifest and only what is manifest. There is, then,

something that is not yet anything, but active, in transaction. With equal insistence that existents areobjects of human interactivities, there must be a corresponding space left open for the status of nature

when it is at the cusp of interaction. Limiting the field of what exists allows for a new take on the noun

exist so as to see it as verbing (to exist), existence is as existence does there is room for growth

since there is no principle of conservation of existence. The refusal or at least discomfort in the face ofwhat emergentism strives to articulate is due, at least in part, to a prejudicial notion that existences have

some sort of proud independence or indestructibility. They hold their own secrets, their own potentials,

their own lifespans. This is an immensely practical view to hold, as day to day its worth inspecting thea particular existent to see what it can do, and then cataloguing where the doing came from for latter

when one needs the same action done again. But the fallacy of thinking all existence to bebatteries

because they have batteriness finds satisfaction in successful inquiry so thorough that it ends updiscouraging further inquiry into what has been found out. Been there, done that is the motto, as if

the resources were used up. A possibility is a logical or intelligent definition of an operation a

possible operation? All that can happen to my conduct is a change in direction I believe to have


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possibilities, but that says nothing about the existences themselves apartfrom intelligence.

Deweys metaphysics calls for an affirmative learned ignorance la Pascal (ignorance savante,

Penses 327). It may seem oddly put that a philosopher who prizes intelligence would condone alearned ignorance but this is the self-reflective ignorance that avoids evil isms and rigid separations,

who is gracious to history and mindful of the unforeseeable, who doesnt cease testing.

Naturalism @ Unmodern & Modern 97, 143, 289 (Naturalism is non-materialistic), but most

importantly: 303 (Intelligent naturalistic philosophy is by its very nature committed to the doctrine

that natural events, as far as they are unaffected by entering into interactivity with human behaviorexpressive of needs, desires, and purposes, lie totally outside of the categories of means and ends, while

(positively put) assoon as intentional or deliberate human activity intervenes, the means-consequences

category becomes central) What a sentence! Theres wit right beneath the surface, which plays on thecharacterization ofphilosophy; it has a nature (criticism) and all nature should have a generic nature

but this nature is only guessed by nature. An existential circle down to fundaments, patently. Anyway:

philosophy is concerned with an end, criticism of criticism, and that end commits it to take nothing as

fixed in itself, outside of human activity. But this very take is a human interaction an intentionalresult of deliberation. Philosophy, as an interaction, puts mean-ends into its central focus, but to do so

it has to hypothetically take as a principle that these categories are authored and authorized by the

philosophers. Naturalized ontology is both doing ontology naturalistically, but also undergoingnaturalistic ontology. By this second statement I mean that nature itself gives birth to means-ends.

That ontology is natural, nature puts itself into time and presence. Experience is the foreground of

nature meaning that experience is natures own, it is natural (LW 16:384)

I want to contend that we, as organisms, dont primarily have sensations or sense-experience, but

indeed intuitions or qualities. The quality can be had and parsed as a sense-experience, but sensation

has no more right of privilege to fundamentalness than an intuition of a dear friends broken heart.

Once there are means-consequences, a time-line is generated.

We mustnot see possibilities as latent. Distinguished things in an experience are not, of themselves,

distinguishable. But they appear distinguishable, are experienced as distinguishable, ex post facto. The

past is then cast as the means, the existentially involved potential, and the present issue is a possibility,a possible consequence, which can be repeated or re-applied in the future.

The big point is that an ontology is still historical and one that establishes that time is open,possibilities are not all there and freedom is a real genuine capacity is ultimately not a certainty

(Freedom or individuality, in short, is not an original possession or gift [cf. The future as a possession

in Art as Experience]. It is something to be achieved [faith in ideals of the future, future issue], to be

wrought out. Suggestions as to things which may advantageously be taken, as to skill, as to methods ofoperation, are indispensible conditions of its achievement. These by the nature of the case must come

from asympathetic and [yet] discriminating knowledge [criticism] of what has been done [the

experienced] in the past and huw it has been done [the past experiencing] Inividuality and ExperienceLW 2:61) . It is a matter offaith in ideals that we set up. Naturalized ontology is an ontology that is

natural, not hemmed in by naturalistic limitations. The idea is to thoroughly, positively, do naturalized

ontology, not hold on to an ontological wish-list and just trip it to fit a Procrustean naturalistic bed. Aconclusion we reach in Dewey, say, that genuine time is real where there is creativity and selection, is

itself an endthat was reached with reasoning means. Thus we arent studying natura qua natura, but

nature in experience. Were trying to show the circle in its circulating. What Dewey has done is just


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that. The premise, that any distinction we make of nature is cultural, is in fact cultural just as the

theory of separate kinds of experience conforms to the type of experience that now prevails, (UPMP

344) we must make trial whether we will have better success if experience is seen as a whole.

These moments of artistic integration, if experienced aesthetically, would not express a future end, but

would themselves be the end and the means together.

God is the creative moment in every act of individuation adjustment, integration? Religion and the

Religious.

Deweys lesson is that the fear of being socially determined causes old-fashioned individualism to

flee further into ones own in order to assert some ersatz individuality. It is a paradox that an individual

is always a surplus beyond social determination, but the potentialities that make a creative individualwhat that individual is can only be called out by interacting. A corporate existence is the reality, and

we must work creatively, responsive and responsible, to fashion a society that determines in the right

way.

The Big Thought is that one only qualitatively is after an interaction/experience is had potentials are

known after a relational determination from without. But what actually goes on is a double-barrelled

engagement, in reciprocity. Yet, I am notwhat is put in relation.

Milk is only milk when it is milking; it could be plastic-ing, or maybe someday it would be fuel for

cars.

Real individuality, time, is a mystery its a great mystery because the individual is always yet an

irreducible remainder. No matter the cross-section, there is always something left over an irrational

positive existence with a dark ungraspable fringe.

Physical traits of nature and patterns of social economies the metaphor between these two is not a

rhetorical allegory, but is really really there. Epistemic conditions are in fact ontological denizens ofnature are ignorant, and thats how freedom can work itself in.

I must relate Deweys articulation of the word in with the sense of meanings as the form (not

matter), and get at his denotation of information.

Though Dewey shies from technical presentation, he is no less a technician in his chosen format.

Growth must be opposed to the dictate that something cant come from nothing. And growth is notjust the unfolding of pent up possibilities, but possibilities (or potentialities) themselves are generated

newly.

Time and Continuity?

Necessity in mechanistic philosophy this asserts that knowing the mass, velocity, and vector (all

relational) of every thing that has these, then you would know all future configurations of these

relations. Since mechanics is confined to a specific set of relations maybe this predictability is


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warrantable. However, it cannot actually predict the universe because it leaves out individuality. I

could swap two particles with the same velocity, etc, and the universe would appear as predicted but in

fact be different than predicted.

Find the citation about cross-section with respect to temporal process. (I think its in Nature in

Experience). Youre looking at an ongoing process, every existence has underwayness.

Individuals existbut they do not have existentiality or isness. This is why we are tempted to say that

individuals are abstractions or it is a contradiction to say that they can neither be nor be conceived

with the transactional situation.

The Big Three: Emotion, intellect, practical Unmodern 337 / Art as Experience

The work of art (work as in what was worked over, but also work as in the infinitive verb used as a

substantive, a womans work is never finished the work of art can be at work in a work of art. Dewey

is playing with the use of definite and indefinite articles, in this case the indefinite article is much more

definitive) is individual and affirms its individuality, brings it to meaning, by affirming the workingpresence of what is inarticulate as inarticulable. Thatexperience and nature involve each other in an

existentialcircle is brought to light by integrating what is non-conscious into an experience which can

only be brought to consciousness with conscious reference to what is hidden and never-to-beconscious. The work of art shows the existential circle as circulating, and a fortiori the individual as

relating.

DNA exists so that it can be just that. It was the answer to the problematic situation of giving birth to

itself. Darwinism is an application of this developmental principle of nature to a limited field of

relatively perceptible phases of existence in their eventful precariousness. I do not believe there is a

coherent way to explain the existence of electrons, for example, without recourse to a similar story-telling. It would be a breach of method to suppose they have just always been there. An electron was

natures way of solving the problematic situation that suggested the existence of electrons. But what

was the problem? It cant be said exactly, for we only every have communicative access to aspects ofconclusions, never the problems. Even if the problematic quality was cast in an understandable

language, it would no longer be the problem itself, but a term that receives its meaning from a new

problematic stance toward the problem. All we can intelligently aspire to, and indeed what sciencedoes, is to inquire into a continuity that ought to be there. Some state of affairs preceded the stable and

regular existence of electromagnetic radiation, and some stretch of history between the Big Bang and

the institution of electromagnetism would presumably explain the existence though, to be sure, notfrom any point of view but that of the inquirers. We can ask la Nagel, What is it like to be an

electron? or better, What is it like to be on the verge of becoming an electron? If we take Samuel

Butlers egg-comment to its furtherst generalization: nature is only natures way of making new nature.

Possibilities are thought of as if they are latent in what is just there, to be decided over, a limit of

predictability. From a coin toss to a card game to a career choice, we weigh the possibilities. People

defend reality of possibilities by believing the universe to be in a radical way indeterminate, which, ifthey were pressed, would mean probabilistic. But, retorts the Newtonian, a probabilistic system is

actually ballistic fully mechanical. So an argument rages over whether the universe is a block or not,

and if freedom is to have any sway, it must be an autonomous decider at nodes of possibilities. Butwhat are possibilities? The future is felt as thepossession of possibilities here and now (Art as Exp

18). Possibilities are rooted in present intelligence. The determinist takes a large system of small

kinetic bodies and says there are many possible paths it can traverse on its way toward maximum


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entropy. Once it reaches the limit, the macrostate is stable to the extent that it can no longer change

the system has used up its stock of possibilities and realized its latent or dormant potentiality. Theres

no telling which way my cream will whirl and whorl in the coffee, but I know that from any given state

there are only so many possible states following before the cream is thoroughly mixed in. One thinksof that moment when the cream first hits the coffee as containingall its possibilities, which will be

worked out over time.

Generic Traits: In a certain system of discourse, one may consider various types of paint, comparing

them against each other by use of a rubric of general paint-related qualities. In this manner, tubes of

paint may be substantially different one from the next, but a hierarchical principle by which to organizethem could not appear as but ad hoc, let alone would a specific paint present itself as the ur-paint upon

all paints depend. A table of qualities that all paints have precludes a well-ordered array in terms of the

paints themselves, though allows comparisons to be made on the basis of selected qualities (eg, this ismore red than that). But taken all together, and with good conscience, the different paints inhabit a

continuous community. I am trying to evoke why a faith in generic traits promotes the searching for

continuity paint-qualities teach continuity among paints, mass/velocity teach continuity among

kinetic objects, but not all kinds of existence are massive, or colored. If there are traits that allexistences have, then everything that is is in continuity.

Continuities ought to be sought out, else an understanding or adequate statement of a new view will beundeveloped. All that is is situated must be heeded in order to approach comprehension of whatever is.

Why develop the statement of what is? (As living, we love order a taste for disorder is often

enveloped in a larger orderly for-the-sake-of, pure revelry for no purpose is very difficult to enact Artas Experie 15) (Unmodern 338 The practical aspect of all experience is Deweys tie-down for why

qualities are felt in anticipation of what occurs living is always a going-on thus everything that

happens either furthers life or stops it cold, thus there is an anticipatory reference shown in the

immediate qualities . . . 340 This does not involve the assumption of the existence of a power or facultyof anticipation, foresight, or prediction belonging to something termed a mind, self, person, or

consciousness . . . Impulses and habits have momentum, they reach ahead. Futurity [the essence of the

future, the future as it is immediately experienced] colors the qualities of any situation into whichorganic factors enter as components. [There is no iron-clad reason to exclude these considerations

from simpler systems of energies. Protozoa and snowflakes have momentum also, which, if it is not

to be resolved into an occult causative force inherent in their spatial location, could rather be cast interms of their own going-on carried over from a selective going each moment prior. This is not

animistic as much as it is an attempt to connect the scientific explanation of a widely observed

character which is the bafflingly elegant and effective Principle of Least Action to its more complicatedmanifestations. Not intending to establish a foundational power or law, but instead to examine the

phenomena circumscribed by causality without exonerating an arrow of time from its due quid jure.

Causality, if it is an explanatory tool is to be intelligible, depends on an understanding of why things

move in the direction they do. So called reverse causation seems to be so troublesome to somebecause the ideas of temporal direction and causal efficacy have not been kept so firmly apart that these

thinkers think reverse causation is a different sort of causation besides just the same in a different

direction. The principle of Least Action cant actually explain any event, since it assumes that everyvirtual motion is not indeed virtual but impossible. It is not an explanation but a tool for prediction.

It guarantees its validity by proving the impossibility of anything that isnt provided for by the principle

itself. A least action is successful in bridging the old and the new, but how would it be able to foreseewhat the new is so that it can make the appropriate adjustments? Chop up the total path into smaller

portions and the problem persists. If something actually follows what could be described as least

action it must be already underway toward a future. Myopia cannot be absolute, but neither is there a


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mystical vision of the future. It is important here not to say too little, nor too much, when

characterizing the significance of process. And this is not word mysticism but pains must be taken to

say what can be said about existence, to treat the process of existing as a function functionally. I just

read an article which stated that the successful meme is one [who can] bridge the old context and thenew. The unsuccessful meme is one who cannot bridge the gap between contexts and thus cannot make

the transition to new contexts and new situations. Where does the successful meme come from? Is

there a finite stock of memes, all we have, that then get winnowed down over time? Of course not.But then if it is the successful meme, how can it be what it is before it actually succeeds, before it

bridges a gap and is only a bridge? Conscious foresight and imagination makes the generation of

solutions fairly easy at certain higher levels but what are we to say about non-conscious generation?The successful meme is not a thing before it functions successfully and memetically ) Because the

means-consequences, the meanings, are objective and meaningful. Whereas a quality cannot be

expressed, the objects, the products of art, can be shared. And shared experience (necessarily through aform of communication) is the greatest human good (Exp & Nat Communication chapter, p.202 non-

SIU edition). Sharing, transaction, is the ur-environment for anything that is, and thus insofar as

something is, it is sharing sharing what can be recurrent or repeated, applied to different situations, as

a toolwould. Take this quote from LTI 68, The pervasively qualitative is not only that which binds allconstituents into a whole but it is also unique; it constitutes in each situation an individualsituation,

indivisible and unduplicable. Distinctions and relations are instituted within a situation; they are

recurrent and repeatable in different situations. . . A universe of experience is a precondition of auniverse of discourse [but by this it is not implied that experience must be overtlyphysicaloranimal;

there can be psychical experience that is originarily dumb and inarticulate). Without its controllingpresence, there is no way to determine the relevancy, weight, or coherence of any designateddistinction or relation. The universe of experience surrounds and regulates the universe of discourse

but never appears as such within the latter. When a situation develops, the immediate quality

mediating the historical realization, new things are instituted that are the stable embodiment of a quality

that is neither precarious nor stable for it is immediate. (Recurrent and repeatable = shareable,meaningful, communicable, expressed and now the expression is proved expressible. By being

repeatable, it is testable, the hypothesis has informed existence, vice versa, and now we cango places

with the thought.

Wherever perception has not been blunted and perverted, there is an inevitable tendency to arrange

events and objects with reference to the demands of complete and unified perception. Form is acharacter of every experience that is an experience . . . Form may then be defined as the operation of

forces that carry the experience of an event, object, scene, andsituation to its own integral fulfillment.

(art as experience 137) There is a tendency of a situation to become integral integral with regards towhat? Its matter, its subject-matter. Dewey sez that need is a generic trait, and we may say obtusely

that things needto be what they are; as problematic it is not yet resolved. The line of Schelling:

everything that is something without actually being it must by nature seek itself. (Alles, das Etwas ist,

ohne es doch noch wirklich zu seyn, muss, seiner Natur nach, sich selber suchen . . . 136) Being, sezSchelling (8:210) is Seinheit, Eigenheit, ipseity, ownness perhaps this what Dewey means by

fulfillment, that a quality is stilted, is in becoming, if it is not yet its own in actuality, ie, if the means

are not adjusted to the ends in a whole integration. Experience begins as a qualitative whole, and isfulfilled in art as an real thingly whole. In Boisverts words (Metaphysics 151) Integral fulfillment

points rather to an objectively relative situation. The subject-dependent orientation of purpose (cf. In

Time and Individuality the use of source instead of cause) has disappeared. At the same time,integral fulfillment indicates a procedure, of synthesizing which can occur only in relation to the

context in which an existent finds itself. Boisvert walks a fine line with characterizing something as

broad as an existent with a behavior as specialized as finding itself. I believe Boisvert uses the


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phrase find itself to just place emphasis on that the existent is situated, but from a slightly different

angle we can emphasize the activity of finding and take the situated existent as factually situating.

The synthetical process is the process of finding oneself, situating oneself. If a situation always has

a tensive center, as Alexander claims, then thefunctionalmeaning of situation as situatingis alwaysstriving to form a situation in terms of the concrete. The ideal is striving to achieve reality. The quality

is integrating, expressing itself, in the media in which it is found and this further interaction births the

qualities transformed existence, to take on form (Art as Experience 124)

From the introduction to Sidney Hooks book:

To develop an adequate statement and understanding of a new view is all one with ability to see its

connections, continuities and completions of what went before. Only miraculous creatures, goddesses

springing full grown from the head of Zeus, are exempt from a period of uncertain and precariousgrowth. The other fact overlooked is that the establishmentof these continuities demand a recasting, a

re-seeing (re-vising, re-view cf the last paragraph of Nature in Experience), of old beliefs, and the latter

resist modification even more than refractory physical substances. (Criticism, philosophy, is so

intimately connected with metaphysics, because metaphysics allows for establishing base-lines ofcontinuity Criticism is the revising, and its ability is opened by holding in troth the idea of continuity

given as the moral of the generic traits. There is continuity, though the heavens may fall. Even though

beliefs resist that passage about the miser and the man of deep convictions philosophy is chargedwith liberating meanings by making particulars more meaningful. From a quality, a situation, one must

think critically to find the ground and state the conclusion this involves the a reconstruction of the

past as it suits a development into the new. The establishment(existence) of objective continuity. As ifcontinuity would not be there if it werent established.) In short, the perception of continuity and

fulfillment occurs only as old ideas undergo a subtle and pervasive modification (Interesting choice

modification. It is as the past, the established, is substantial, but has a modular plasticity, so that

without changing in substance, which would be a sort of discontinuous break, it modulates toaccommodate what sprang anew. The mere perception of discontinuity is due to a maladjusted mode,

one which places selective emphasis on what doesnt speak to the history in question, though stands as

a characteristic of the old idea on its own right a right that is put under question in thoughtfulcriticism. How can a modification be pervasive without being more than a mere modification?

Answer: what is being modified are relational distinctions, not the always-more-than-cognitive quality

of the whole. There is a certain sense where thought cannot manipulate quality in itself, becausequality is always hadimmediately). By the time a new conception has become a version of what

every one always believed, what everyone always believed has undergone purgation and

transformation (trans-action implies trans-formation. When a quality is beingtransformedintodeterminate distinctions, we should not read it as a move from oneform to another, but rather an

originalstepping-overinto form. (In every experience there is something obdurate, self-sufficient,

wholly immediate . . . terminal and exclusive. Qualities are terminalbut in the mode of indeterminate.

They need to be transformed into a determinate embodiment.) The end-in-view is an informingpresence when the quality trans-forms orschematizes itself into objective vestments; it takes on

embodied form in the processual activity of its realization.) [Bernstein, quoted in Alexander 66,

complains that Dewey vacillates between talking about tranforming qualities, and then that qualitiesare brute, unconditioned. Transform is maybe better rendered as translate, but either way, it is a

stepping-overinto form. From what? Immediacy that hasnt yet been formed, for anything we can

point to, be aware of, is form and indeed informedby the quality that has transformed into this-here-now concrete distinction. It is only immediate because when it is operative, it mediates and is, in its

manifestation, mediated (the ground and grounded are adjusting to each other) (From one angle,

almost everything I have written is a comment on the fact that situations are immediate in their direct


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occurrence and mediated and mediating in the temporal contiuum constuting life experience

Experience, Knowledge and Valuation : A Rejoinder. Only a twisted and aborted logic can hold that

because something is mediated it cannot be immediately experienced. Art as Experience 119) Why

dont the critics just think of it as they would talk quite naturally about the quality of light.

Anyway, the realization of qualities is akin to the realization of individuality. They each must take on

form in the formal realm of relations.

On the other hand, phases of the former beliefs which have to be discarded if the new one is valid are

unconsciously but surely read into the new. (Validity is a matter ofconscious appraisal? Thoughsome phases/modes are repressed, they cannot totally lose their pedigree?) . . . Just as it takes time to

discover the respects in which a new idea completes and organizes old beliefs, so it takes time to detect

and eliminate old elements which are so taken for granted [as a situation would be] that they areunconsciously projected, to its undoing, into the new. Gradually, often imperceptibly, an equilibriumis attained as eccentricities are smoothed into connections and engrained habituations are remade. . .

There is an important sense in which all conclusive thinking is circular and is justified by its circularity

(The Potency of Indifference, the Situation, is an existential Circle that is finally achieved only in themost conclusive integrative thinking. It was with thought at the beginning (see Conduct and

Experience something that is not yet a stimulus sustains relations), but only achieved at the end, in an

experience given objectively as a product of art). It brings us back at its close to the material which(in)formed its starting point (by being transformed), enabling us to see it as (imaginatively!) a

contributing and an enveloped (thereby developed) member of an inclusive whole. This completer

vision forms, I take it, the reality of what is termed synthesis. This consists in the perception ofmaterial previously isolated and fragmentary as a constituent of a related unity (synthesis is in the

perception of unity an epistemological achievement is ontological).

Emotion as the disequilibration (Unmodern 335) The break is the disequilibration. Something (=x)breaks.

SELECTIVITYWhy must sub-atomic particles be selective and moments of creative potential? Does it have

something to do with how their existence is only ever a matter of being in transaction? The subject is

barred, blank there is nothing that interacts but what is in transaction. In asserting such a claim, I amnot such a nothing-butter as Alexander may assume, because the qualitative individuality is no-thing.

Objective interaction is the overt means by which the actualized situation is brought into existence(Logic TOI 288, LW 12:288)

CONTINUITY: Alexander 98ff;

LTI 18f, 23 / LW12:26, 30;

Naturalistic means, in one sense, that there is no breach of continuity between operations of inquiry

and biological operations and physical operations. Continuity on the other side, means that rationaloperationsgrow out oforganic activities, without being identical with that from which they

emerge . . . . The primary postulate of a naturalistic theory of logic is continuity of the lower (less

complex) and the higher (more complex) activities and forms. Thats it. Activities and forms. Not sobig and bad, after all. . . . The growth and development of any living organism from seed to maturity

illustrates the meaning of continuity. Qualities are actually the marks of ultimate differences,

discreteness. (Exp&Nat 267)


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Exp&Nature 301 Activities which develop, appropriate and enjoy meanings bear the same actualizingrelation to psycho-physical affairs that the latter bear to physical characters. They present the

consequences of a wider range of inter-actions, that in which needs, efforts and satisfactionsconditioned by association are operative.

FUNDAMENTAL EXPERIENCE / Generic Traits

Exp&Nat 13, If experience actually presents esthetic and moral traits, then these traits may also be

supposed to reach down into nature, and to testify to something that belongs to nature as truly as doesthe mechanical structure attributed to it in physical science. Everything explanation has to end

somewhere, and the adequacy of each is determined by the situation. Why did he do that? There are

social, biological, psychological, psychoanalytical, phyical, and so on . . . Is one more fundamentalthan the other? How can we tell? If we take advantage of the word esthetic in a wider sense than that

of application to the beautiful and ugly, esthetic quality, immediate, final or self-enclosed, indubitably

characterizes natural situations as they immediately occur. (Exp&Nat 82) You cant go wrong with

what is.

Peirce in Doctrine of Necessity: By saying that we infer it experientially, I mean that our conclusion

makes no pretension to knowledge of wheat-in-itself, ouraltheia, as the derivation of that wordimplies, has nothing to do with latentwheat. We are dealing only with the matter of possible

experienceexperience in the full acceptation of the term as something not merely affecting the senses

but also as the subject of thought.

C I Lewis quoted at LW 16:235 : to paraphrase, logicalanalysis only discovers a constant context of

experience in which the phenomenon under question will be found. Logical analysis does not discover

the substance or cosmic constituents of the phenomenon. Lewis puts substance in scare quotespresumably because he doesnt know what to call this thing (= x).

Existences are necessarilyparticular(eg LW 1:145). That is why they cant beimmediately, though

they have immediacy (LW 3:77, Everything (=x) which is experiencedhas immediacy, and that . . .

every natural existence [why this qualification?], in its own unique and brutal particularity of existence,also has immediacy . . .To have traits, however, is not to be them.... sensation [is not] immediate, but it

has immediacy.), or part the original being / transactional process. Particulars Knowing & Known

classifies existences and events with facts as what are known and on their way toward better knowing.Existences are contrasted with functions for inferences in Nature in Experience take an atom: in order

for it to be warrantable to assert that an existence is atomic it must meet certain observed conditions. If

it doesnt fit any conditions for assertion, if it is unique, what then? Is there such a thing as existence

as such? (p 257 Bernstein book) It is impossible to name an immediate event (LW 1:150). There areexistences without meaning, that then come to take on meaning (LW 3:89)

FORM

Alexanders chapter in Hickmans book, p9

LTI 383: Form and matter may become so integrally related to one another that a chair seems to be achair and a hammer a hammer, in the same sense in which a stone is a stone and a tree is a tree (He

conflates technology, organism, and physical as all informed). The instance is then similar to that of

the cases in which prior inquiries have so standardized meanings that the form is taken to be inherent in


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matter apart form the functioning of the latter (ie, habit has taken form to be proudly independent).

These instances exemplify the principle stated in the first part of this chapter; namely, that forms

regularly accrue to matter in virtue of the adaptation of materials and operations to one another in the

service of specified ends. Form requires a specified (informed) end. Without the idea up ahead, thespecified end, there would be no form. Form is a way of working out the existence of an end that is,

somehow, divined(Schelling). That is the miracle of qualitative thought: no goddess emerges all at

once from Zeuss head, but if it werent for his idealized premonition, he wouldnt be able to give birth.The hunch, the quality, is divined by the haver the quality itself, with no simple location, must have

been no less immediate than a wink that upsets the prior moment and sets a situation in motion. The

organism feels the inkle of the situation, only at first a tensive hint, so immediate as to feel eternal. It ispervasive, everywhere at once, coloring and qualifying all that attention perches upon. Then the

inkling is developed, and from the thinnest ribbons a solid pattern rhapsodically emerges. Following

the inkle, a unity develops of reciprocally interweaving strands.

(Peirce and the cable metaphor of truth, woven strands of reactions for a complete experience (Dewey

in beginning of Ch 4 in Art as Experience))

Object is chosen as the clearly indicated name for stabilized, enduring situations, for occurrences

which need so long a span of time, or perhaps so minute a space-change, that the space and

time changes are not themselves within the scope of ordinary, everyday perceptual attention (ATerminology for Knowings and Knowns 244) For what do these occurrences (which are essentially in

transition) needa span of time? They need it to be what they are. In order to be an object, an

occurrence (a species of Event) needs to move beyond the threshold of everyday human attention.Does the occurrence need to be an object? Perhaps human agency actively makes the object or

perhaps, strangely put, if it is to be an object, it needs to be an object. Needis a generic trait, because

all existences are events they are underway and undergoing, indigent, needful of being themselves.

The name objects will be reserved for subject-matter so far as it has been produced and orderedin settled form by means of inquiry; proleptically, objects are the objectives of inquiry." (LTI p.

119.)

PROCESS

We establish for our use with respect to both fact and knowledge that we haveno "something known" and no "something identified" apart from its knowing and identifying,

and that we have no knowing and identifying apart from the somewhats and somethings that are

being known and identified. (A Terminology for Knowings and Knowns, JP 231) There is always a

process a whole is wholing, a situation is situating. For a fact to be known, for a situation to be awhole, it must be in the process of doing that a process of working out a quality in the act of

qualifying. Every existence is an event. And so, from a Something (Indifference, a situation), comes a

ground that is grounding the object that is objecting.

If we have to establish knowings and knowns in a single system of Fact, we certainly must

be free from addiction to a presumptive universe compounded out of three basically differentkinds of materials. (A Terminology of KK 239) We are free to see all knowings and knowns by

hypothesis in one system, within one Fact. If this is reduction, its not a kind of one to worry over.


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CIRCLE

Weierstrauss Function.

Our position is simply that since man as an organism has evolved among other organisms in

an evolution called "natural," we are willing under hypothesis to treat all of his behavings,including his most advanced knowings, as activities not of himself alone, nor even as primarily

his, but as processes of the full situation of organism-environment; and to take this full situation

as one which is before us within the knowings, as well as being the situation in which theknowings themselves arise (Interaction and Transaction)

INKLE

The simple imaginative mind may have its rewards in the repetitions [the single pervasive quality is

unrepeated, though, Art as Experience 36] of its own silent workings coming continually on the Spiritwith a fine suddenness Keats

There is given an inkle in the whole transaction. The etymology of this word is dubious, lost in the past

so as to be irreducible to any of its earlier relatives. What an inkle is can only be the subject-matter ofan inkling. As a matter of fact, the story of its etymological cataloging is tangled and twisted, rife with

disagreement and disproved hypotheses. Scholars are not even sure where to assign precedence

between inkling and the infinitive to inkle; for the time being it is impossible to decide decisively.From the point-of-view taken by retrospective analysis, that indeterminacy is expressive of fairly

precisely the use to which I wish to put the word to work. Only after feeling an inkling would one

wonder where it came from; whether or not there must be something that had inkled, or inkles presently

to one. All one can say is that the inkling was primary, and then, in reflection, one can suppose that onewas inkled to.

If consciousness is called into interaction when inquiry is stimulated, it is only natural to assume that

consciousness could not be perceptive from the beginning of what it is about to do. It is roused to

attention before knowingwhere to give its attention it feels its way at first, and plays a game of hot-and-cold with the subcounscious until it gets its bearings. The inkle is only an inkle to the lucidity of

conscious experience it is darkness compared to the clear light of immediately had consummations.

But on the subconscious plane, the actualizing relation the inkle plays with regard to consciousnessmay be repeated analogically in the relation between subconsciosness and its fringe or subfloor. To

modify Pascal, the inkle has its reasons the inkling knows nothing of.

Perhaps the original logical operator, (because all logic is the stabilizing of tensive situations) ahushed hinting voice, less than a whisper, more immediate and stimulating than a wink. Just as the

visible is set in the invisible (Exp & Nat?), so is the logicible set in the unlogicible. Of course, the

invisible is only that way for the time being, and can be made visible in a new future there is nonethe less a moment were what is logicible is a mere thimble in the sea of unlogicible. The Question is

what to make of thepossibility for vision or logicizing is it there in the invisible, or is such an

assertion as the invisible being all along visible (as in: capable of being seen) a breach of immediateempiricism, ie, bad transcendental realism? But fictive things wink as they will. Wink most when

widows wince. And as an unsuspected wink would, the inkle obligates a hypothesis (Hypothesis is the

Great Power of man our freedom from coersion). What was that about? Much as HeideggersRuf


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brings the hearer into the situation, the inkle initiates a qualitative queerness until the inkling is worked

out. A call that says nothing and comes over Dasein from nowheregives no-thingto understand. This

is not idle word-play, for a quality has the strange quality of being no thing yet. It qualifies, and has not

yet been tranformed into a well-ordered naming.

There can be no absolute beginning to anything; this is a claim bolstered by inference, for a quality is

experienced as a discrete break. For the organism, the experience of developing a tensional situationallows only that it could trace its history to the limit of when began the qualitative pervasiveness, a

limit that must be experienced as a pre-historic initiation of an inkling. The logic of experience admits

an always-alreadiness to any situation where one finds oneself. The problematic situation is asactivities not of himself alone, nor even as primarily his, but as processes of the full situation of

organism-environment.

If the inkle is to be posited as a relation between the biological body and consciousness, as an effect of

wider-ranging interactions (quote), then something like an inkle must be present in the kinds of

existences concsiousness emerged from as a beneficiary. Selectivity, selection under hypothesis

affects all observation (KK), requires a proleptic specification of purpose. Forms regularly accrue tomatter in virtue of the adaptation of materials and operations to one another in the service of specified

ends. If, say, a nucleic acid is to take on its form, which in fact it has, it must be serving an a specified

end. Ultimately, the inkling is of nature to produce itself, for the nucleotide is the solution to theproblem of its own existence but itis ultimately a phase of nature. Pre-nucleotide, there was an

ensemble of interacting things that we know to have been on the verge of being a nucleotide. Should

we say that they took on form to serve a purpose other than being that formed thing? Why not?! But asinteracting, they are within a transaction. The whole situation . . . fulfillment . . .

ARROW OF TIME

The reason there is an arrow of time is because each inkling is as a matter of fact no isolated event. Its

beginning is continuous with another closing. If this continuity between events was not the case, it

would be at the very least incredibly improbable that every event so far seen is experienced asdeveloping in tandem with an observers developmental direction. The second law has been

universally observed, a point of fact made remarkable by its neutrality to direction and self-admitted

irrelevancy to necessity.

When a change occurs, afterit has occurred it belongs to the observable world and is connected with

other changes (LW 14:111 Time and Individuality) the light cone and Maxwells demon.Individual change, which is innocent of all law or sovereign in it itself, becomes swept in the first

network of interacting elements that observes the individual.

The organic responses that enter into theproduction of the state of affairs that is temporally later andsequential are just as existential as environing conditions. (LTI 107) We can ground that the arrow of

time has a single direction, universally observed, on the basis that every thing is in transactional

development with the rest things respond, they do not pre-pond. But the response is set with a widerscope of development and our inquiry for the vectorial direction of the arrow of time must just go

back to a beginning that never could be. Organic interaction becomes inquiry when existential

consequences are anticipated(a specified end); when environing conditions are examined withreference to theirpotentialities (potentialities that can only be anticipated after they have been called

out); and when responsive activities are selected and ordered with reference to actualization of

some of the potentialities, rather than others, in a final existential situation.


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There is a dimension different from that of existence (LW 12:19 & 59f.) Symbols do not provide any

evidence ofexistence. This may be the difference between immanentmeanings (such as existential

smoke fire) and inferential meanings (sqrt(16) 4). Existence is the isness, the brutalness, not theintellectual identity of a square-root.

There might be a concern that information, the total detailed description ofwhata thing is, amounts toexplaining thatit is; the universe could be constituted by representative images and ideas at its most

basic level, these just accrue into solids in interactions. Say I go on at length describing a casserole to

someone. My interlocutor has a primary experience of the description of the casserole, but is at least astep removed from a similarly primary experience directly of the casserole itself. These words,

whether they be poetic or a mere list of ingredients with ratios, amount to a primarily experienced

secondary experience with respect to the casserole. Whether or not the casserole exists, the words haveequal claim to fundamentality as an experience, and indeed my description is qualitatively individual.

There is a that it exists to my words, they have a selective behavior; when my hearer goes to the

casserole itself, there is a that it exists expressed by its unique behavior in interaction with the eater

that neither beyond, nor less than, my words, but simply irreducibly different. Didnt the wordsemerge from the casserol

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