Continuing from Lowell 2.12: https://fromthepage.com/jeffdown1/c-s-peirce-manuscripts/ms-455-456-1903-low ell-lecture-ii/display/13617
I now pass to the beta part of the system of existential graphs. It is far more interesting and important than the alpha part but incomparably less so than the gamma part. When one hears a proper name mentioned for the first time, one generally learns of the individual person or thing denoted by that name that it exists. It may, of course, be identified with a subject of force already well-known; but that will be exceptional. It will frequently be apparent that it is a thing quite different from any hitherto mutually recognized. In this case, it will make an addition to the universe of discourse, brought about by means of the assertion of a real relation of it to an object previously recognized. Sometimes, it will be doubtful whether it is one of the recognized subjects of force or not. But what I want to focus your attention upon is that at the first mention of a proper name, apart from any special information about its subject that may then be conveyed, the name merely tells us that something exists, that is, is a factor of the entire complexus of forces that we partly have known by experience. But at any subsequent mention of the proper name, though this assertion of existence is reiterated, yet that being know[n] already is of no importance. The importance of the name at all occurrences after the first is that it identifies what is mentioned with something we had heard of before. If you bear in mind these characteristics of proper names, you will perceive that when lawyers and others use the letters A, B, C as a sort of improved relative pronouns, saying for example that if A owes B money and C owes A money, then B may "trustee" C for the debt (as you say in Massachusetts), these letters differ from new proper names only in the accidental circumstance that they are first introduced in the antecedent of a conditional proposition while proper names are first introduced in positive assertions. I call such improvised proper names selectives. There is nothing to prevent our using the capital letters as such individual names, provided we distinguish the first replica by scribing it heavily or otherwise. I cannot say that this is a bad way; it serves the purpose of putting out of view confusing [trifles?]. But I do say that it requires rather complicated rules, and from every other point of view except that of putting unimportant circumstances out of view and convenience in printing, is usually inferior to another way of fulfilling the same purpose, which I proceed to describe. Since the blackboard, or the sheet of assertion, represents the universe of discourse, and since this universe is a collection of individuals, it seems reasonable that any decidedly marked point of the sheet should stand for a single individual; so that . should mean "something exists." We cannot make this . . to mean that two things exist, since this would conflict with our convention that graphs on different parts of the sheet shall have each the same meaning as if each stood alone, so that consequently the second point merely reiterates that something exists. <http://gnusystems.ca/Lowells.htm> http://gnusystems.ca/Lowells.htm }{ Peirce's Lowell Lectures of 1903 https://fromthepage.com/jeffdown1/c-s-peirce-manuscripts/ms-455-456-1903-low ell-lecture-ii
----------------------------- 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 .
