Jon S., list,
I don't have a quote handy, but Peirce said specifically that the
pragmatic maxim is for clarifying not qualities of feeling, but
conceptions. I suppose that that could include conceptions of qualities
of feeling, but not the qualities of feeling themselves. A mechanical
quality (such as the unscratchability or 'hardness' of a diamond) is not
a quality of feeling. Instead it's an if-then property that we think of
as a quality as if of feeling. Peirce said something to that effect, but
it may take a while for me to dig it up.
Best, Ben
On 1/9/2017 11:07 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt wrote:
Ben, List:
BU: This rule-style of formulation reflects a major difference
between Peirce's generals and Peirce's qualities of feeling which
are generals when reflected on but are not rules and are not
formulated as rules.
I am not convinced that there is a significant difference here, at
least when it comes to applying the pragmatic maxim in order to
ascertain the meanings of our concepts of qualities--as /monadic/
predicates embodied in /actual/ things--at the third grade of
clearness. As with generals, we define them using a subjunctive
conditional that is true regardless of whether the relevant test is
ever actually performed. "For all /x/ , if /x/ is hard, then /x/
would resist scratching." "For all /x/ , if /x/ is red, then /x/
would primarily reflect light at wavelengths between 620 nm and 750
nm." The difference is that qualities are also real as /medads/
--possibilities not predicated of anything actual, but simply being
what they are independently of anything else.
BU: At first I thought I knew what you meant, but somehow it's
become less clear to me, I can't even recapture what I at first
thought you meant. I'm trying to put it in the context of your
regarding the use of the word "general" as evoking the possibility
of exceptions.
It was not really about that; more the idea that a general as a
continuum whose multiple instantiations are /different/ --even if only
infinitesimally /distinguishable/ --seems more plausible than a
universal whose multiple instantiations are somehow supposed to be
/identical/ .
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt
<http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> -
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt>
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 4:52 PM, Benjamin Udell <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> > wrote:
Jon S., list,
_/Universum/ _ in the sense of the whole world goes back at least to
Cicero in the 1st Century B.C.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3Duniversus
<http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3Duniversus>
You wrote,
Note also Peirce's stance that universal propositions do not
assert the existence of anything. So "if a cat, then a mammal"
could be true even if neither cats nor mammals exist.
[End quote]
Yes, that's my point about "if a cat, then a mammal" - as a compound
term in the form Cx→Mx, it's true of absolutely everything in the
world (the actual world, at least), and this is reflected by the
usual kind of logical formulation "For all /x/ , if /x/ is a cat,
then /x/ is a mammal" (i.e., "For all /x/ : /x/ is not a cat and/or
/x/ is a mammal"). This rule-style of formulation reflects a major
difference between Peirce's generals and Peirce's qualities of
feeling which are generals when reflected on but are not rules and
are not formulated as rules. With the conditional form "Cx→Mx",
Peirce's generals are maximally general in a sense, just not
pertinent in all cases. As you note, it doesn't entail the existence
of anything, at least not of anything in particular (in Peirce's view
a universe of discourse smaller than two objects should be ruled out,
so the existence of at least two objects is automatically, if not
always relevantly, entailed by any term or proposition in a Peircean
universe).
You wrote:
Peirce's identification of generality with continuity leads me to
think that every general is a continuum of possibilities. Hence
multiple instantiations of the same general are not identical,
just different parts of the same continuum, which is why they are
continua themselves and not necessarily distinguishable from each
other.
At first I thought I knew what you meant, but somehow it's become
less clear to me, I can't even recapture what I at first thought you
meant. I'm trying to put it in the context of your regarding the use
of the word "general" as evoking the possibility of exceptions.
Anyway, your idea that Peirce chose "general" because it suggests the
possibility of exceptions remains appealing. One could extend the
idea to include the possibility of growth and evolution (as of a
genus, and as of a symbol); the idea of the "universal" true of
absolutely everything seems somehow more static and uniform.
Mathematics could get away with it because of mathematics' having its
counterbalancing imaginative freedom, but for the other things
"general" seems better.
Best, Ben
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