> On Aug 18, 2016, at 10:32 AM, Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Could you please elaborate on what you (and Peirce) mean by "virtual" in this > context? Citations of appropriate passages are sufficient if I just need to > do some rereading. >
I think Peirce just means the usual sense of “as if.” I believe he gets the idea and terminology from Scotus. It’s an idea and terminology common now but it wasn’t at the time of Peirce. Peter Skagestad has a good paper on it. https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Cogn/CognSkag.htm <https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Cogn/CognSkag.htm> So does Joseph Esposito. http://www.digitalpeirce.fee.unicamp.br/p-virtuality.htm Peirce defined virtual in the Baldwin Dictionary as "A virtual X (where X is a common noun) is something, not an X, which has the efficiency (virtus) of an X.” For Scotus the emphasis is on virtual knowledge. "No object will produce a simple and proper concept of itself and a simple and proper concept of another object unless it contains this second object essentially or virtually.” So a sphere includes a circle necessarily.
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