Inquiry Blog http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/02/22/mathematical-demonstration-the-doctrine-of-individuals-1/ http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/02/23/mathematical-demonstration-the-doctrine-of-individuals-2/
Peircers, Because it has come up once again, let me just mention one more time why I think Peirce's theory of individuals has such a radical bearing on the whole question of nominalism vs. realism. It is a maxim of nominal(istic) thinking that we should not mistake a general name for the name of a general. But should we then turn around and mistake an individual name for the name of an individual? Peirce makes the status of being an individual relative to discourse, that is, a context of discussion or a specified universe of discourse, and so he makes individuality an interpretive attribute rather than an ontological essence. This does nothing less than subvert the very basis of the controversy between nominalism and realism by dispelling the illusion of nominal thinkers that the denotations of individual terms are necessarily any less ideal than the denotations of general terms. Whether signs are secure in their denotations has to be determined on more solid practical grounds than mere grammatical category. If I may append a self-quotation, here are a few from the turn of the millennium: http://web.archive.org/web/20030927022020/http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg04332.html http://web.archive.org/web/20070705085032/http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/thrd24.html#04332 http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/Mathematical_Demonstration_and_the_Doctrine_of_Individuals o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o Any genuine appreciation of what Peirce has to say about identity, indices, names, proper or otherwise, and the putative distinctions between individual, particular, and general terms will have to deal with what he wrote in 1870 about the "doctrine of individuals". Notice that this statement, together with the maxims that "Whatever has comprehension must be general" and "Whatever has extension must be composite", pull the ruga -- and all of the elephants -- out from underneath the nominal thinker's wishful thinking to find ontological security in individual names, which said nominal thinker has confused with the names of individuals, to turn a phrase back on same. Jon Awbrey o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey my word press blog: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/ inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ isw: http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/JLA oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache
----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
