Nishida and Oyama

I’ve been re-reading Nishida’s An Inquiry into the Good and this sentence just popped out at me:

Prior to the provision of the conditions, the accompanying phenomena, that is, the result, does not exist anywhere. (45)

This pretty well summarizes Oyama’s The Ontogeny of Information. It’s always wonderful to be reading disparate works and then to find some common thread between them. On the other hand, it is equally easy to read difficult works and cherry pick the parts that conform to your already held worldview rather than challenging yourself to really come to terms with what the author is saying (I want to say I got this last notion from Husserl or Jaspers, but I think it might have been Dennett).