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Part III. Preliminary Remarks
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169 Part III Preliminary Remarks The purpose of Part III is to provide arguments for the philosophy of ultimate reality on which Philosophical Theology is based. A consistent theme of Parts I and II is that the cognitive control on symbols of ultimacy comes through metaphysics. Metaphysics, as the term is used here, and as an interpretive generalization of the great philosophic traditions of civilizations, is the development of hypotheses that attempt to articulate as nearly literally as possible “the generic traits of existence,” to use John Dewey’s phrase.1 In this context, the metaphysical question is what to say about ultimate realities. Metaphysics in the sense intended here is the development and defense of hypotheses about two interconnected topics. One is the question of being: What does it mean to be, and why and how are there beings rather than nothing at all?2 In deference to some primal traditions in Western thought, this can be called ontological metaphysics because of its derivation from the Greek word “to on,” being. The other topic is the question of the transcendental or universal traits that define being something, or determinateness: being this rather than that or nothing at all. In deference to parallel Western traditions this can be called cosmological metaphysics because it explores what a thing must be in order to be anything at all.The cosmological dimensions of metaphysics are presupposed and employed in various ways in the ontological discussions because the questions of what it means to be are dependent on a theoretical understanding of being “something,” or being determinate. Conversely, the questions of cosmological metaphysics presuppose and employ ontological metaphysical hypotheses about the questions of being. Dialectical metaphysical argumentation sorts its way back and forth between the ontological and cosmological questions and hypotheses proposed to address them. Philosophical Theology identifies the ontological ultimate reality with the singular creative act through ontological metaphysics, and identifies the four cosmological ultimate realities through cosmological metaphysics, noting the 170 v Ultimates interpenetration of the two. Chapter 9 is mainly about ontological metaphysics and chapter 10 is mainly about cosmological metaphysics. Cosmological metaphysics is related to philosophical cosmology or philosophy of nature, and frequently is appealed to in metaphysics to provide illustrations of the more abstract hypotheses about what it is to be determinate. “Philosophical cosmology,” as Whitehead called it, or philosophy of nature, is more obviously empirical than metaphysics, less general and more concretely involved with cultural concepts of the world.3 At the imaginative level that functions as a resource for contemporary philosophy, philosophical cosmology draws on many root cultural constructions, such as the substance philosophy of Aristotle in the West contrasted with Plato’s process philosophy, or the movement of changes through eons and alternative worlds in South Asian philosophies, or the conceptions of change, yin and yang, and the emergence of things in the Dao in East Asian philosophies. Contrary to what is commonly thought, images such as these have been interacting with and influencing each other for millennia. In Western philosophy, cosmology or philosophy of nature in late modern times has been reduced to science and philosophy of science for many thinkers. But the natural sciences and philosophy of science have been constructed so as to exclude value from nature, which is a mistake obvious to common sense and to awareness of the responsibilities of life (II, 1; III, 9). Whitehead’s philosophical cosmology took pains to set science and philosophy of science in a wider empirical philosophy of nature than includes value.4 The cosmological metaphysics of chapter 10 reflects a value-laden concept of nature in philosophical cosmology. These preliminary remarks sketch the overall metaphysical argument for the theory of ultimate realities employed throughout Philosophical Theology (summarized again in II, pt. 1, pr; II, 16, i; III, 4, ii).The argument is complex enough that it bears repetition from many angles: Say what you are going to say, say it, and then say what you have said. The sketch here asks a series of questions that add up to a complicated but integrated argument and then indicates the hypothesis and subhypotheses to be elaborated in answer. The technical meanings of many of the terms can only be brought out in the argument itself, which approaches them from several angles. These remarks can serve as a prospectus of the argument as it progresses. What can be said metaphysically about ultimate reality? The dialectical entrance to this question is through the ontological question of being, framed...