Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

Thus the endeavour to understand eternal objects in complete abstraction from the actual world results in reducing them to mere undifferentiated nonentities. This is an exemplification of the categoreal principle, that the general metaphysical character of being an entity is ‘to be a determinant in the becoming of actualities.’ Accordingly the differentiated relevance of eternal objects to each instance of the creative process requires their conceptual realization in the primordial nature of God. He does not create eternal objects; for his nature requires them in the same degree that they require him. This is an exemplification of the coherence of the categoreal types of existence. The general relationships of eternal objects to each other, relationships of diversity and of pattern, are their relationships in God’s conceptual realization. Apart from this realization, there is mere isolation indistinguishable from nonentity.

But a proposition, while preserving the indeterminateness of an eternal object, makes an incomplete abstracp. 393tion from determinate actual entities. It is a complex entity, with determinate actual entities among its components. These determinate actual entities, considered formaliter and not as in the abstraction of the proposition, do afford a reason determining the truth or falsehood of the proposition. But the proposition in itself, apart from recourse to these reasons, tells no tale about itself; and in this respect it is indeterminate like the eternal objects.

A propositional feeling (as has been stated) arises from a special type of integration synthesizing a physical feeling with a conceptual feeling. The objective datum of the physical feeling is either one actual entity, if the feeling be simple, or is a determinate nexus of actual entities, if the physical feeling be more complex. The datum of the conceptual feeling is an eternal object which is referent to any actual entities, where the any is absolutely general and devoid of selection. In the integrated objective datum the physical feeling provides its determinate set of actual entities, indicated by their felt physical relationships to the subject of the feeling. ‘These actual entities are the logical subjects of the proposition. The absolute generality of the notion of any, inherent in an eternal object, is thus eliminated in the fusion. In the proposition, the eternal object in respect to its possibilities as a determinant of nexus, is restricted to these logical subjects. The proposition may have the restricted generality of referring to any among these provided logical subjects; or it may have the singularity of referring to the complete set of provided logical subjects as potential relata, each with its assigned status, in the complex pattern which is the eternal object. The proposition is the potentiality of the eternal object, as a determinant of definiteness, in some determinate mode of restricted reference to the logical subjects. This eternal object is the ‘predicative pattern’ of the proposition. The set of logical subjects is either completely singled out as these logical subjects in this predicative pattern or is collecp. 394tively singled out as any of these logical subjects in this pattern, or as some of these logical subjects in this pattern. Thus the physical feeling indicates the logical subjects and provides them respectively with that individual definition necessary to assign the hypothetic status of each in the predicative pattern. The conceptual feeling provides the predicative pattern. Thus in a proposition the logical subjects are reduced to the status of food for a possibility. Their real rdle in actuality is abstracted from; they are no longer factors in fact, except for the purpose of their physical indication. Each logical subject becomes a bare “t’ among actualities, with its assigned hypothetical relevance to the predicate.”

It is evident that the datum of the conceptual feeling reappears as the predicate in the proposition which is the datum of the integral, propositional feeling. In this synthesis the eternal object has suffered the elimination of its absolute generality of reference. The datum of the physical feeling has also suffered elimination. For the peculiar objectification of the actual entities, really effected in the physical feeling, is eliminated, except in so far as it is required for the services of the indication. The objectification remains only to indicate that definiteness which the logical subjects must have in order to be hypothetical food for that predicate. This necessary indication of the logical subjects requires the actual world as a systematic environment. For there can be no definite position in pure abstraction. The proposition is the pcossibility of that predicate applying in that assigned way to those logical subjects. In every proposition, as such and without going beyond it, there is complete indeterminateness so far as concerns its own realization in a propositional feeling, and as regards its own truth. The logical subjects are, nevertheless, in fact actual entities which are definite in their realized mutual relatedness. Thus the proposition is in fact true, or false. But its own

*Cf. my Concept of Nature, Ch. I, for another exposition of this train of thought.

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truth, or its own falsity, is no business of a proposition. That question concerns only a subject entertaining a propositional feeling with that proposition for its datum. Such an actual entity is termed a ‘prehending subject’ of the proposition. Even a prehending subject is not necessarily judging the proposition. That particular case has been discussed earlier in Chapter IX of Part II. In that chapter the term ‘judging subject’ was used in place of the wider term ‘prehending subject.’

To summarize this discussion of the general nature of a proposition: A proposition shares with an eternal object the character of indeterminateness, in that both are definite potentialities for actuality with undetermined realization im actuality. But they differ in that an eternal object refers to actuality with absolute generality, whereas a proposition refers to indicated logical subjects. Truth and falsehood always require some element of sheer givenness. Eternal objects cannot demonstrate what they are except in some given fact. The logical subjects of a proposition supply the element of givenness requisite for truth and falsehood.

SECTION II