[Inquiry] Re: Doctrine of Individuals

[Jon Awbrey]

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DOI.  Note 4

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| Individual (cont.)
|
| (2) Another definition which avoids the above difficulties is that
| an individual is something which reacts.  That is to say, it does
| react against some things, and it is of such a nature that it
| might react, or have reacted, against my will.
|
| This is the stoical definition of a reality;  but since the Stoics were
| individualistic nominalists, this rather favours the satisfactoriness
| of the definition than otherwise.
|
| It may be objected that it is unintelligible;  but in the sense
| in which this is true, it is a merit, since an individual is
| unintelligible in that sense.  It is a brute fact that the
| moon exists, and all explanations suppose the existence
| of that same matter.  That existence is unintelligible
| in the sense in which the definition is so.  That is
| to say, a reaction may be experienced, but it cannot
| be conceived in its character of a reaction;  for
| that element evaporates from every general idea.
|
| According to this definition, that which alone immediately presents itself as
| an individual is a reaction against the will.  But everything whose identity
| consists in a continuity of reactions will be a single logical individual.
| Thus any portion of space, so far as it can be regarded as reacting, is
| for logic a single individual;  its spatial extension is no objection.
|
| With this definition there is no difficulty about the truth that whatever
| exists is individual, since existence (not reality) and individuality are
| essentially the same thing;  and whatever fulfills the present definition
| equally fulfills the former definition by virtue of the principles of
| contradiction and excluded middle, regarded as mere definitions of
| the relation expressed by "not".
|
| As for the principle of indiscernibles, if two individual things are
| exactly alike in all other respects, they must, according to this
| definition, differ in their spatial relations, since space is
| nothing but the intuitional presentation of the conditions of
| reaction, or of some of them.  But there will be no logical
| hindrance to two things being exactly alike in all other
| respects;  and if they are never so, that is a physical
| law, not a neccesity of logic.  This second definition,
| therefore, seems to be the preferable one.
|
| C.S. Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 3.613
|
|'Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology',
| J.M. Baldwin (ed.), Macmillan, New York, NY,
| Volume 1, pp. 537-538, 2nd edition 1911.

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