The Contemporary Prospect

Abstract

There are, then, as we have maintained, two ways in which metaphysical theories may be analogies. As analogies of being, they seek to say something about “ reality “ transcending experience, in terms of relations found within experience. As co-ordinating analogies, they seek to relate diverse types of experience by extension of a key idea derived from some predominant intellectual or spiritual relation. Such ideas share something of the character of scientific models. But whereas scientific models suggest possible patterns for the co-ordination of data of a homogeneous type, the metaphysical model has to suggest a possible pattern of co-ordination between data of different types. A metaphysician has therefore to be sensitive to the diversities within experience, and also to possible modes of relationship. Moreover, whereas in the case of the scientific model the data to be co-ordinated are whatever relevant conclusions from observation may be available at the time in the work of the science in question, for the metaphysical “ model “ the data themselves must be extracted out of the whole manifold of experience by means of discriminatory judgments of what is important.